Rachel Stern2022-05-02T14:41:57-04:00January 12th, 2022|Events, Past Events|
Note: Attendees must provide proof of vaccination (including booster, if eligible) and advance Eventbrite registration. Presented by BFA Visual & Critical Studies, the SVA Honors Program, and The Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized, and Banned Art. In honor of The Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art's virtual exhibition “Identity, Art and Migration,” this panel discussion probes historical and all-too contemporary fault lines of persecution, migration, intolerance, cultural complexity and art. Historians, curators and artists come together to discuss the life and work of artists who were persecuted by the German Nazi regime and came to the US during the first half of the 20th century, while also hearing from living artists who are facing the challenge of relocation [...]
Rachel Stern2022-03-28T19:23:45-04:00January 5th, 2022|Events, Past Events|
Opening remarks by Consul Yasemin Pamuk, Consulate General of the Federal Republic of Germany in New York Distinguished Panelists Ori Z Soltes PhD, Georgetown University in Washington DC Artist Refugees from Nazi Germany in the United States Rebecca Erbelding PhD, Historian and Author in Washington DC US Immigration Policy during the 1930s Refugee Crisis Stephen M Rasche JD, Catholic University in Erbil, Kurdistan Region, Iraq Identity in a Time of Forced Displacement: Religious Art and the Iraqi Christian Experience David Stern, German born American Artist in New York NY Immigration and Culture Shock in Times of Globalization Musical Performance (Piano) Carolyn Enger, Steinway Recording Artist: Arnold Schoenberg - Sechs kleine Klavierstücke Op. 19 Emahoy Tsegué-Maryam Guèbrou: Homesickness Pt. 1 Paul [...]
Rachel Stern2022-03-25T18:23:56-04:00December 25th, 2021|Newsletter|
Dear Friends, Until December 31, you can still watch the 2019 feature documentary "Lily" - for free! A big thank you to director Adrienne Gruben for making the film available to us. LINK TO FILM SCREENING AND RECORDING OF 11/17 EVENT There, you can also watch the recording of the November 17 discussion about discovering Lily Renée and producing the film, featuring Award-winning Herstorian and writer Trina Robbins, director and producer Adrienne Gruben and producer David Armstrong. December 31 is also the end of the year. For us, it was the busiest year in the (short) history of the Fritz Ascher Society. We continued our virtual programming with our monthly "Flight or Fight" lectures and our investigation into "Trauma, Memory and Art," and we [...]
Rachel Stern2022-01-09T15:43:18-05:00November 20th, 2021|Newsletter|
Dear Friends, As we approach Thanksgiving, Hanukkah, Christmas and the final weeks of 2021, we thank you for your interest in our work. Over the past two years, our audience grew exponentially and became global, and we very much appreciate the diversity of backgrounds and viewpoints we now find in our discussions. We are especially grateful to those who helped make our work possible with their donations. And I just have to ask again for your support, because we need your donations more than ever. This year, until December 31, there are also unique tax-savings opportunities available in the US: The 2020 CARES Act allows you to deduct cash gifts to charity up to 100% of [...]
Rachel Stern2022-01-09T15:47:45-05:00November 1st, 2021|Newsletter|
Dear Friends, This month, we continue our Zoom discussions featuring Anni Albers, Arthur Szyk and Lily Renee: Wednesday, November 3, 12:00pm EDT: From Sea to Shining Sea: Anni Albers in America (1899–1994) Join us for a conversation about Anni Albers’ art and career, featuring Laura Muir, Associate Director of Academic and Public Programs and the Louis Miller Thayer Research Curator at the Harvard Art Museums in Cambridge MA and Ori Z Soltes, PhD, Teaching Professor at Georgetown University, Washington DC., moderated by Rachel Stern, Director and CEO of the Fritz Ascher Society in New York. ZOOM REGISTRATION LINK Anni Albers, Preliminary Design for Wall Hanging, 1926. Gouache and pencil on paper; [...]
Rachel Stern2022-08-26T05:17:58-04:00October 14th, 2021|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
Anni Albers (Berlin 1899 – 1994 Orange, CT) found her artistic identity at the renowned Bauhaus--but not where she expected to. The gender-restrictive conditions at the school pushed her to textile work. As the Nazis forced the Bauhaus closure, Anni and her already well-known husband, Joseph Albers, immigrated to the United States, where Joseph and later Anni were invited to teach at Black Mountain College in North Carolina. From there to New York and Yale University, while her husband gained renown as a teacher and practitioner of painting, Anni expanded her presence as an innovator in diverse textile media and styles, shaping a far-flung, influential career that resonates to this day. The United States presented Albers with new [...]
Rachel Stern2022-08-26T05:12:16-04:00October 14th, 2021|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
What is it that defines human identity? DNA? Language? Culture? Landscape? Polity? Or is it a combination of all of these factors? How do the sources of identity make it easy or difficult for individuals who migrate from one location to another—by choice or under duress—not merely to adapt but to become fully comfortable within their new home? In this brief Zoom Conference, an interdisciplinary panel of experts considers how identity is shaped by our genomic make-up; how it is affected by the migration from home to new and different dwelling places; and how, in particular, migrational shifts can affect artists and their creative process. Expert Panel: Libby Copeland, Award-winning journalist and author Ori Z Soltes, Teaching Professor at Georgetown [...]
Rachel Stern2021-11-28T14:47:24-05:00October 12th, 2021|Newsletter|
Dear Friends, During the first half of the 20th century, the numbers of people migrating were second only to today. What do we know about their experiences? How do artists, with their particular set of sensibilities respond to their own migration? Today, we are proud to announce the virtual project “Identity, Art and Migration” which investigates US immigration of European refugees during the first half of the 20th century through the lens of seven artist case studies: Anni Albers, Friedel Dzubas, Eva Hesse, Rudi Lesser, Lily Renée, Arthur Szyk and Fritz Ascher. In the upcoming weeks, we discuss the seven artists featured in this project, and introduce and discuss interdisciplinary scholarship about “Identity” and “Migration” in two [...]
Rachel Stern2022-09-01T07:14:59-04:00October 10th, 2021|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
Lily Renee arrived during the Holocaust in New York City as a teenager, and somehow found work in the male-dominated comic book world. By the time of her retirement, she had become a legend and her heroic female characters--like Lily herself, smashing through the glass ceiling of gender expectation--and shaping figures that would inspire several generations of young readers, both girls and boys, to rethink the norms that so often otherwise surrounded them. Image above: Lily Renée, Senorita Rio, Fight Comics, Fiction House, not dated. Trina Robbins collection. Lily Renée, Lily Renée, The Werewolf Hunter, Fiction House, not dated (probably 1948). Trina Robbins collection © Lily Renée Lily Renée, The [...]
Rachel Stern2022-08-26T05:20:00-04:00October 8th, 2021|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
In a prolific career that spanned nearly five decades, Friedel Dzubas (b. Berlin, 1915–d. 1994, Newton, Mass.) articulated his mature style by the 1970s, creating a striking visual language from counterpoised abstract shapes of brushed color that he juxtaposed, overlapped, and opened to reveal his gessoed grounds. Yet, in prior years, Dzubas’s early work in Berlin were influenced by Expressionist artist of the two primary groups known as Die Brücke and Die Blaue Reiter. As Dzubas told curator Charles Millard in 1982, “Their unheard-of brashness of color; that was really brave. That was very exciting. Color’s an emotional thing. These people not only spoke directly; they felt deeply. There was passion.” His early pen and ink watercolors embed the [...]
Rachel Stern2022-08-26T05:07:57-04:00October 7th, 2021|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
Shaped in accordance with the theme of the current Fritz Ascher Society online project, "Identity, Art and Migration," this brief conference focusses on psychological, historical and art historical aspects of migration—broadly and in particular within the context of artists seeking refuge in the United States during the Holocaust. Expert Panel: Rebecca Erbelding, PhD, USHMM historian in Washington DC Katya Grokhovsky, artist and founder of The Immigrant Artist Biennal in New York NY and Ori Z Soltes, PhD, Teaching Professor at Georgetown University in Washington DC These diverse experts will address the specifics of American immigration policies in the first half of the twentieth century and how they particularly affected those seeking refuge from the ravages [...]
Rachel Stern2022-08-26T05:10:27-04:00October 6th, 2021|Events, Lectures, Past Events|
Fritz Ascher (Berlin 1893 - 1970 Berlin) almost made it out of Germany as the persecution of the Jews was developing. SINCE HE HAD been arrested and released from concentration camp and prison after several months, friends managed to book passage on a ship to Shanghai, but the German Nazi bureaucracy refused to let him leave the country. Ascher found refuge in the basement of his deceased mother's friend, Martha Grassmann--in a house located in the Grunewald, the heart of the Nazi brass residential neighborhood in Berlin. In hiding--an interior migration--he shifted from vibrantly expressionist paintings and drawings to dense poetry. AFTER the war he emerged to a Germany very different from the one he had known before and [...]
