Wandering Objects: Program Schedule

A symposium jointly organized by the North Carolina Museum of Art and the
Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill

Please note that events on Sunday and Tuesday are at the NC Museum of Art in Raleigh and events on Monday are at UNC at Chapel Hill.

PROGRAM SCHEDULE

Sunday, November 11, 2018

Location: North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh
2110 Blue Ridge Road, Raleigh, NC

11a-2:30p
Informal tours of the NCMA Judaic Art Gallery by UNC students and faculty

3:00p
Keynote Address
Abram and Frances Pascher Kanof Endowed Lecture & Reception
Auditorium & Lobby, East Building

Welcome Remarks: John Coffey, Deputy Director for Collections and Research and The Jim and Betty Becher Curator of American and Modern Art Curator of Judaic Art, NC Museum of Art, and Terry Rhodes, Senior Associate Dean, UNC College of Arts and Sciences

Introduction of Keynote: Gabrielle Berlinger, Babette S. and Bernard J. Tanenbaum Fellow in Jewish History and Culture, and Assistant Professor, Department of American Studies

Speaker:  Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Chief Curator of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, and Professor, New York University

Collect, Interpret, Present: From Judaica to Holocaust Avatars
Jewish things are ubiquitous. They can be found in homes and synagogues, museums and souvenir shops, warehouses and auction houses, studios and factories, flea markets and yard sales. They may be “Jewish” by birth or by conversion. They may be possessed or dispossessed. They may survive catastrophe or only in memory. This talk will explore the life of Jewish things in the world and in the museum, as material or digital objects, sites of loving memory or anxiety, as art or artifact, and, above all, as a prism that refracts Jewish experience.

Monday, November 12

Location: Ackland Art Museum, UNC-Chapel Hill
101 S. Columbia Street, Chapel Hill, NC

8:30a
Light breakfast, for all attendees

9:00-9:30a
Welcome remarks
Ruth von Bernuth, Director, Carolina Center for Jewish Studies and Associate Professor of Early Modern German Studies, Department of Germanic and Slavic Languages and Literatures, and Gabrielle Berlinger

9:30-11:30a
Panel 1: Objects in Motion: Placement and Displacement
Moderator:  Ruth von Bernuth and Gabrielle Berlinger

Speakers:

• Laura Leibman, Professor of English and Humanities, Reed College: A Tale of Two Cups: How Carribbean Jews Trouble Material Religion

• Shalom Sabar, Professor of Jewish Art and Folklore, Hebrew University, Jerusalem: Collecting Jewish Ephemera: How and Why

• Erica Lehrer, Associate Professor of History and Sociology/ Anthropology, Concordia University: Awkward Objects of Genocide: Curatorial Dreams for Communities of Implication

11:30-11:45a
Coffee / cookie break

11:45a-1:00p
Collectors’ Roundtable: Collecting the Past for the Future
Moderator:  Gabriel Goldstein, Adjunct Curator of Judaica at the North Carolina Museum of Art

Participants:

• Several participants TBA
  

1:00-2:30p
Lunch, for all attendees and university book store, Hyde Hall University Room

2:30-4:30p
Panel 2: Reconstructing Sacred Spaces: Memory and its Narratives
Moderators: Michael Figueroa, Associate Director, Carolina Center for Jewish Studies, and Assistant Professor, Department of Music, and Paul Jaskot, Professor of Art, Art History & Visual Studies, Duke University

Speakers:

• Francesco Spagnolo, Curator, The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life and Associate Adjunct Professor, Department of Music, University of California, Berkeley: Music And/As Material Culture: Towards A Sound Study of the Synagogue

• Diego Rotman,the Regina Rosen Visiting Artist in Residence in Cultural Studies and Jewish Studies and Visiting Professor, Queen’s University: Bringing Back What Has Never Been There: A New Jewish Open Air Museum in Bavaria?

• Laura Levitt, Professor of Religion, Jewish Studies and Gender at Temple University:“The Evidence Room”: A Contemporary Holocaust Reliquary

4:30-5:30p
Reception for all attendees and tour of exhibition of Jewish objects in Ackland collection

Tuesday, November 13

Location: North Carolina Museum of Art, Raleigh
2110 Blue Ridge Road, Raleigh, NC

8:30-9:00a
Light breakfast for all attendees

9:00-11:00a
Panel 3: Shifting Positions: Altered Identities and Meanings
Moderator: Marcie Cohen Ferris, Professor Emeritus, Department of American Studies

Speakers:

• Juliana Ochs Dweck, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Academic Engagement, Princeton University Art Museum: Blessed Benches or Pews as Jewish Things

• Samantha Baskind, Professor of Art & Design, Cleveland State University:What’s in a Seal?: Imprint, Identity, and the Jewish Publication Society of America

• Jenna Weissman Joselit, Charles E. Smith Professor of Judaic Studies and Professor of History, Director of the MA in Jewish Cultural Arts Program, The George Washington University:Making the Rounds: The Procession of the Torah in the Modern Sanctuary

11:00-11:30a
Coffee break

11:30a-1:00p
Curators’ Roundtable: Curating the Past for the Future
Opening Talk and Moderator: Suzanne Seriff, Founding Director of the Gallery of Conscience at the Museum of International Folk Art and Sr. Lecturer in Anthropology at University of Texas at Austin: Pop-Up Pedagogy: New Directions in Community Engagement within and beyond the Museum Walls

Participants:

• Simona Di Nepi, Charles and Lynn Schusterman Curator of Judaica Art of Europe, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston
• Susan L. Braunstein, Senior Curator, The Jewish Museum, New York
• Dale Rosengarten, Founding Director of Jewish Heritage Collection, College of Charleston
• John W. Coffey, Deputy Director for Collection and Research, The Jim and Betty Becher Curator of American and Modern Art, Curator of Judaic Art, North Carolina Museum of Art
• Juliana Ochs Dweck, Andrew W. Mellon Curator of Academic Engagement, Princeton University Art Museum

• Respondent: Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Chief Curator of the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw, and Professor, New York University

1:00-1:15p
Closing thoughts: Gabrielle Berlinger and Gabriel Goldstein

Support for this program is generously provided by the Slomo and Cindy Silvian Foundation,
Inc., David Berg Foundation, Judaic Art Endowment at the North Carolina Museum of Art, Abram and Frances Pascher Kanof Lecture Fund at the North Carolina Museum of Art, and the Friends of the Judaic Art Gallery at the North Carolina Museum of Art. Additional support is provided by Debbie and Mike Rubin in honor of Lawrence J. Wheeler, Dr. Ugo Goetzl and Ina Wallace, Marion Meyer-Robboy and Stanley J. Robboy, Lisa and Michael Sandman, and Iris and Stephen Weiss.