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Rachel Stern

Dec 25, 2021

ALL BEST WISHES FOR 2022!

2022-03-25T18:23:56-04:00December 25th, 2021|Newsletter|Comments Off on ALL BEST WISHES FOR 2022!

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 [...]

Nov 20, 2021

FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter December 2021

2022-01-09T15:43:18-05:00November 20th, 2021|Newsletter|Comments Off on FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter December 2021

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 [...]

Nov 17, 2021

“Vorhang auf für Emmy Rubensohn! Musikmäzenin aus Leipzig”
Gewandhaus zu Leipzig, Mendelssohn Foyer, Leipzig, Germany

2021-12-22T06:58:04-05:00November 17th, 2021|, |Comments Off on “Vorhang auf für Emmy Rubensohn! Musikmäzenin aus Leipzig”
Gewandhaus zu Leipzig, Mendelssohn Foyer, Leipzig, Germany

“Curtain Up for Emmy Rubensohn! Music Patron from Leipzig” Music patron, concert manager, salonière and letter writer - this is roughly how you could describe Emmy Rubensohn's profile. An exhibition that can be seen between November 10 and December 19, 2021 in the Mendelssohn Foyer of the Gewandhaus Leipzig - at a location that Emmy Rubensohn is connected with in a special way. On the one hand, she was born in Leipzig in 1884 as the daughter of the Jewish entrepreneurial family Frank, who owned a textile factory there. On the other hand, even as a young girl she was a passionate concert-goer who was particularly attracted to the Gewandhaus concerts. In any case, she was busy collecting autographs [...]

Nov 1, 2021

FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter November 2021

2022-01-09T15:47:45-05:00November 1st, 2021|Newsletter|Comments Off on FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter November 2021

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; [...]

Oct 14, 2021

From Sea to Shining Sea:
Anni Albers in America (1899–1994)
Featuring Laura Muir and Ori Z. Soltes, PhD

2022-08-26T05:17:58-04:00October 14th, 2021|, , |Comments Off on From Sea to Shining Sea:
Anni Albers in America (1899–1994)
Featuring Laura Muir and Ori Z. Soltes, PhD

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 [...]

Oct 14, 2021

CONFERENCE: Identity and the Arts
FEATURING Libby Copeland, Ori Z Soltes
Deborah Tannen and Oksana Yakushko

2022-08-26T05:12:16-04:00October 14th, 2021|, , |Comments Off on CONFERENCE: Identity and the Arts
FEATURING Libby Copeland, Ori Z Soltes
Deborah Tannen and Oksana Yakushko

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 [...]

Oct 12, 2021

FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter October 2021

2021-11-28T14:47:24-05:00October 12th, 2021|Newsletter|Comments Off on FRITZ ASCHER SOCIETY Newsletter October 2021

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 [...]

Oct 10, 2021

Lily Renée (1921-2022):
From Refugee to Renown
Featuring Trina Robbins, Adrienne Gruben and David Armstrong

2022-09-01T07:14:59-04:00October 10th, 2021|, , |Comments Off on Lily Renée (1921-2022):
From Refugee to Renown
Featuring Trina Robbins, Adrienne Gruben and David Armstrong

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 [...]

Oct 8, 2021

Remembering Friedel:
An Intimate View of Friedel Dzubas (1915-1994)
Featuring Karen Wilkin and Sandi Slone

2022-08-26T05:20:00-04:00October 8th, 2021|, , |Comments Off on Remembering Friedel:
An Intimate View of Friedel Dzubas (1915-1994)
Featuring Karen Wilkin and Sandi Slone

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 [...]

Oct 7, 2021

CONFERENCE
Artists Migrating to the United States, In and Beyond the Nazi Period
FEATURING Rebecca Erbelding, PhD,
Katya Grokhovsky, and Ori Z Soltes, PhD

2022-08-26T05:07:57-04:00October 7th, 2021|, , |Comments Off on CONFERENCE
Artists Migrating to the United States, In and Beyond the Nazi Period
FEATURING Rebecca Erbelding, PhD,
Katya Grokhovsky, and Ori Z Soltes, PhD

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 [...]

Oct 6, 2021

Fritz Ascher (1893-1970):
Coming back to Life
Featuring Karen Wilkin and Elizabeth Berkowitz, PhD

2022-08-26T05:10:27-04:00October 6th, 2021|, , |Comments Off on Fritz Ascher (1893-1970):
Coming back to Life
Featuring Karen Wilkin and Elizabeth Berkowitz, PhD

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 [...]

Oct 6, 2021

The Cartoon Crusader Comes to America:
Arthur Szyk’s Battle against the Nazis in the New World
Featuring Steven Luckert and Irvin Ungar

2022-08-26T05:14:46-04:00October 6th, 2021|, , |Comments Off on The Cartoon Crusader Comes to America:
Arthur Szyk’s Battle against the Nazis in the New World
Featuring Steven Luckert and Irvin Ungar

Prior to World War II, Polish-born Arthur Szyk (Lodz 1894 – 1951 New Canaan, CT) was best known for his ornately detailed renderings of historical subjects and Jewish themes. But after the German invasion of Poland in September 1939, he gained the accolades of international audiences for his biting caricatures of Nazi leaders and his efforts to garner support for the Allied cause and Europe’s persecuted Jews. In 1940, Szyk took his mighty pen to the United States, where he quickly became a popular artistic sensation. His images graced the covers and inside pages of leading magazines, like Time, Colliers, Esquire, Look, The American Mercury, Coronet, and Liberty. Szyk’s cartoons regularly appeared in The New York Post, The Chicago [...]

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