Community - Philadelphia Museum Of Jewish Art

The Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art (PMJA), founded in 1975, presents contemporary art exhibits that illuminate the Jewish experience. Organizing three solo and group shows a year, the Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art exhibits work by artists of diverse backgrounds. In addition to the special exhibits, the Museum features a permanent collection of works by artists including William Anastasi, Chaim Gross, Shelley Spector, Boaz Vaadia and Roman Vishniac, all of whom exhibited at the PMJA.

Located at Congregation Rodeph Shalom, 615 North Broad Street, Philadelphia, the PMJA is free and open to the public. (Entrance and parking on Mount Vernon Street.)

Hours
Monday–Thursday: 10–4
Friday: 10–2
Hours are subject to change: please call (215) 627-6747 to confirm

Current Exhibit

Judith Brodsky: Memoir of an Assimilated Family
Opening Reception & Panel Discussion on March 3 at 6:00-8:00pm

Panel topic and participants:
Our Lives as Jews: Material for Art and Literature
Michael Curtis, Distinguished Professor Emeritus, Political Science, Rutgers University, moderator.
Judith K. Brodsky, artist
Judy Gelles, artist
Alicia Ostriker, poet, Distinguished Professor Emerita, Rutgers University
Monroe Price, Director of the Center for Global Communication Studies (CGCS) at the Annenberg School for Communication, University of Pennsylvania
Victor Brombert, Henry Putnam University Professor of Comparative Literature Emeritus, Princeton University.

Judith Brodsky combines family snapshots with text and creates lush images that while specific to her family and their particular journeys from immigration through assimilation are the ultimate manifestations of the American dream. We can all identify with these images as if we are looking at our own family albums while being captivated by the story of this particular family with its complex dynamic and exceptional accomplishments.

More about Judith K. Brodsky

See PMJA page on the following site: www.philagrafika2010.org/node/118

Previous Exhibits

ON WINGS OF PRAYER”
Laurie Wohl
UNWEAVINGS
September 11 - December 7, 2009

Zoe Coehn
What Was Our Vision: Sixteen Scenes from Wandering in the Desert
July 10 - August 16, 2009
Taking shape in Zoë Cohen’s desert visions are the artistic and spiritual explorations of a twenty-first century artist. Imagined in them are the millennia-old revelations of her ancestors, the progenitors and early practitioners of Judaism. Intrigued by earth- and female-centered traditions that predated and helped to shape monotheistic belief and practice—but have since been sublimated or disavowed—Cohen sought out images of ancient Near Eastern art. She culled from them a collection of figures, shapes, and symbols that resonated with her growing Jewish belief and observance.

Hand To Hand: Photographs by Zeva Oelbaum
March 26 - June 26, 2009
Opening Thursday, March 26 at 7:00pm
In Hand to Hand, Zeva Oelbaum presents a body of work literally taken from the pages of history. Having grown up with stacks of Hebrew books relegated to her family’s basement, Oelbaum was fascinated by the scribbles and markings she found in their endpapers (with paper being a rare and expensive commodity in the 19th century and earlier, a book’s endpapers were often used as “note pads” for making lists, practicing spelling, and recording purchases). Manipulating imagery from her family’s books and those from Jewish libraries and archives, Oelbaum transforms markings written in multiple languages--Latin, Russian, German, Polish, Aramaic, and Yiddish--immortalizing the inherent visual lyricism in words and scribbles inscribed in books that, like the people who owned and/or studied them, existed and persisted through the geographic and linguistic transmutations of the Jewish Diaspora.

Visionary Biblical Sculpture: Found Object Constructions by Howard Lerner
September 5 - November 7, 2008
Renown New York artist, Howard Lerner creates magnificent works which bring the viewer closer the mysteries behind Biblical stories. In his sculpture one can feel that he tangibly recreates these ancient interactions between God and man into image and word. Using found objects, the discarded remnants of our civilization for sculptural material, he weaves and integrates these stories into the individual pieces. Through his interest in yoga meditation and the spiritual figures from our Torah, the interconnections and similarities sparked within him a great dialogue between these great cultural and spiritual paths. In each construction he drew upon these two great traditions for inspiration.

GATHERING SPARKS: The Art of Siona Benjamin
December 10, 2008 - March 10, 2009
Sonia. Benjamin is a Jew who grew up in India, a predominately Hindu and Muslin society, and was educated in Catholic and Zoroastrian schools. Now living in America, Ms. Benjamin has always reflected upon the cultural boundary zones in which she has lived; “Now living in the multicultural United States, I feel a strong need to make art that will speak to my audience of our similarities, not our differences.” Ms. Benjamin received an MFA in painting from Southern Illinois University and an MFA in theater set design from University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.