Visual Moment | A Forgotten Ottoman Way Station
The Ottomans ruled what is now Israel for 400 years, and during that time they made some iconic contributions to the man-made landscape. Sultan Suleiman I (a.k.a. Suleiman the Magnificent) completed the current walls of Jerusalem’s Old City in 1541. The Jaffa Clocktower, finished in 1903, was built to celebrate the silver jubilee of Sultan Abdul Hamid II. Over time, innumerable Ottoman buildings have been lost, replaced by those of British or Israeli design, just as they in turn had replaced those of the Crusaders, Mamluks, Byzantines, Romans, Hasmoneans, Greeks, ancient Israelites, Babylonians, Assyrians and Philistines.
A Rare Peek Into a Renowned Library’s Vault
The extraordinary works in this exhibition are rarely seen, and this is their first time in America.
Visual Moment // Odessa
“To this day I remember, feel, and love this town...I love this town because I grew up in it, was happy, melancholy, and dreamy in it. Passionately and singularly dreamy.”
Reframing Roman Vishniac’s Legacy
Maya Benton was a high school senior living in Los Angeles when the Russian-American photographer Roman Vishniac’s first posthumous book, To Give Them Light, came out in 1993. Renowned for his iconic images of Eastern European Jews taken between the two World Wars, Vishniac had died three years earlier at age 92.
Visual Moment // Moshe Safdie
In 1967 a 29-year-old Israeli-born Canadian architect by the name of Moshe Safdie gained international recognition for his groundbreaking, visionary design for high-quality, affordable urban housing.
Visual Moment // Pink Phones, Midcentury Modernism & More
Did you ever wonder about the origin of the distinctive round thermostat that regulates the temperature in your home? Or how about the pink Princess phone every teenage girl once coveted or those eye-catching images that promoted such films as The Man with the Golden Arm, Anatomy of a Murder or Exodus? All these items, it turns out, are evidence of the vital role that Jewish architects, designers and patrons played in the development and dissemination of modernism in America.
Visual Moment // Chagall’s Orphée
“Marc loved the small-town feeling of Georgetown,” Evelyn wrote. “He liked being able to greet our neighbors and walking to Woolworths to buy postcards and an art-supply store to buy more brushes.” One day he told her that he wanted to “do something for the house,” but later, he said, “No, the house is perfect; I’ll make a mosaic for the garden.”
Visual Moment // “Degenerate” Art
In July 1937 Germany’s National Socialist Party opened an exhibition in Munich it termed “Entartete Kunst,” or “Degenerate Art.” Intentionally housed in cramped, poorly lit conditions and awkwardly hung, the works on view were accompanied by inflammatory, denigrating labels. The exhibition was an open declaration of the Nazis’ state-run war on modern art and the effort to impose their officially sanctioned conception of art through propaganda and force.
Visual Moment // Persian Jewish Art
Illuminating the History of Iranian Jews
By Diane M. Bolz
Jews have lived in Persia, now Iran, for nearly three millennia. The first Jewish community dates back...
Visual Moment // Medieval Cairo
By Diane M. Bolz // Today, fewer than 50 Jews remain in Egypt, but for thousands of years the country was home to a series of important Jewish communities.
A Visual Moment / A Medieval Manuscript
By Diane M. Bolz
Maimonides Illuminated
One of the finest and most elaborate illuminated Hebrew manuscripts in existence is now on view at the Metropolitan Museum of...