Museum of Jewish Heritage / Tribute WTC Visitors Center

Becks on Vacation, 1933 Crikvenica, Croatia

5/9/2010, Sunday 

MUSEUMS:

Museum of Jewish Heritage …….......…. 2.25 hrs

Tribute WTC Visitors Center ….........…... 2 hr (with tour)

COST:

Museum of Jewish Heritage …….....…... $12 per adult, plus $5 for audio tour

Tribute WTC Visitors Center ……............ $10 per adult, plus $5 for tour

Most of the time, we select the museums we see in a day based on geographical proximity.  Generally museums are only open from 12 to 5, so, if you want to see more than one or two in a day, it's important to keep transportation times between museums to a minimum.  This necessity has lead to some amusing museum combinations, like last weekends High-Brow/Low Brow combo (United Nations Headquarters followed by Ripley’s Believe It Or Not), Old/New pairings (the Tenement Museum followed by the New Museum of Contemporary Art), and just plain weird contrasts (the Ukrainian Museum followed by the Museum of Comic and Cartoon Arts). 

Gardens of Stone, by Andy Goldsworthy

Occasionally we are able to work in a few theme days, intentionally or not, such as Tibet Day (Rubin Museum of Tibetan Art followed by Tibet House) and Performing Arts Day (NY Library of Performing Arts followed by the Rose Museum at Carnegie Hall) or the Day of Money (American Numismatic Society Coin Collection followed by the American Museum of Finance).  Today was one of those theme days, in this case completely unintentional.  In retrospect, maybe it wasn’t a good idea to see the two bleakest, most depressing museums in New York City on the same day, but as Paul said, if we had seen the mythical “Museum of Sunshine and Rainbows” today, we’d still be depressed.  And it would ruin the sunshine and rainbows.

Destruction of the WTC on 9/11

Badge used to label Jews during WWII

Today’s museums were the Museum of Jewish Heritage (the Holocaust museum in NYC), and the Tribute WTC Visitors Center (about the destruction of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001), so the theme for the day was, essentially, death, mass murder and the horrible consequences of religious intolerance.  Regrettably this was also the day that we had persuaded Priti, a friend new to the area, to come along on a museum trip for the first time.  Not surprisingly, we haven’t been able to talk Priti into a second trip.

Museum of Jewish Heritage

However I don’t mean to give the impression that either of these were bad museums.  They were both interesting and thought provoking, effective at evoking the loss and horror of their respective subjects.  The Museum of Jewish Heritage, befitting the scope of Holocaust, was by far the larger of the two museums and had a wide spectrum of detailed multi-media exhibits in a modern hexagonal shaped building with tiered floors and a memorial garden (called the Garden of Stone, see picture above).  The museum is built right on the water at the southern tip of Manhattan, and has a great view of the Statue of Liberty and the New York harbor.  Paul and I have been to a number of Holocaust museums, both in the U.S. and in Europe, and we both felt this was one of the best.  We liked the fact that, while it certainly covered events of the Holocaust, it didn’t focus on just the tragedy.

Alder Family Having Tea, 1924 Vienna

The Museum of Jewish Heritage is divided into three distinct floors.  The first floor, titled “Jewish Life A Century Ago,” covered Jewish life in Europe in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, before World War II.  No other Holocaust museum that I’ve been to spent so much time on how Jews lived before the Holocaust, and it was eye opening.   To me the most surprising thing was how much it revealed that Jewish people in Europe were a disparate group, living in many different countries and influenced by different cultures, and they didn’t always agree.  One exhibit had 5 different video screens, each featuring people arguing different schools of Jewish thought: Zionist, Conservative, Orthodox, Reformed and Socialist.  It was also interesting to note points where Jewish culture had influenced the people around them.  For example, Priti is from Poland, and realized that, although she is not Jewish, her mother believed it was unhealthy to eat meat and dairy together.  That belief is part of kosher dietary law and probably came from Polish Jews.

Joseph Fuchs, 1945 Germany

The second floor was titled “The War Against the Jews” and focused on the events of the Holocaust, told through the people who lived through it using artifacts, photographs, testimonials and historical footage.  It was a detailed series of exhibits, and, as we were looking at and hearing actual survivors, it felt very raw.  It brought home the horror of the people imprisoned in ghettos and concentrations camps, the loss of families torn apart, and the isolation of realizing that everyone you know is dead.  The museum also covered non-Jews who came to the aid of Jews during the Holocaust (called the Yad Vashem), and had a whole room covered with their names.  Paul was grateful for this oasis of good on a floor that detailed the evil humans are capable of.

Louis Bannet, 1938 Holland

Fortunately, the museum ends in a better place.  The third floor was titled “Jewish Renewal,” and tells the story of how Jewish individuals rebuilt their lives after World War II.  Most of the exhibits featured American Jews and focused on familiar subjects, like Jewish entertainers in Hollywood.  There was even a Mah Jongg game room, telling the story of this game in Jewish-American life.  Despite the more uplifting, occasionally playful nature of this floor, we had to rush through it, as we had spent over 2 hours in the museum and wanted to make the last tour at the next museum.

Tribute WTC Visitors Center

The Tribute WTC Visitors Center is a very different style of museum.  Instead of a spacious modern building on the water, the WTC Visitors Center is in a small storefront next to a pizza parlor, across the street from the construction site that used to be the World Trade Center.  Many of its exhibits are hand made and not always well explained.  However, the rough edges of this museum served to make it more personal and heartfelt.  For example, there was an entire wall of handmade posters that families put up around the city in the weeks after the World Trade Center towers fell, each with a picture of a lost loved one and a plea for their return.  We looked at picture after picture of people playing with their children and hanging out on vacation, realizing that these people are never coming home. 

Photographs of the dead at the WTC Visitors Center

Other exhibits included things pulled out of the rubble of the World Trade Center, like a shredded fireman’s helmet and a twisted iron girder, demonstrating the destructive power of the towers’ collapse.  However the best part of the museum was the walking tour around the World Trade Center site, with a guide going over the events of 9/11.  There isn’t a lot to see on the tour, as the site is under heavy construction, but you get to look at the construction from several angles and the guide gives a lot of description of what it was like before, during and after 9/11. 

Girder from the World Trade Center

The guides are all people who were present or whose lives where profoundly affected when the towers fell, adding a deeply personal element to the tour.  Our guide was biking along the waterfront when the first plane hit, and afterward stayed in the area to help.  He painted a grizzly, hopeless picture of the rescue effort, as there were few survivors.  As he described it, the biggest task of the rescue workers was to attempt to piece together bodies, so that people could be identified and all of the correct pieces buried together.
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Eleven Tears, by Ken Smith

The tour ends at the only memorial to the World Trade Center that has been completed in the area.  Called Eleven Tears, it's a small fountain in the neighboring American Express building honoring the eleven American Express employees that died on 9/11.  However, the official World Trade Center Memorial is set to open this year, in September 2011.  The controversial design will feature two huge waterfall-lined reflecting pools set in the original footprints of the Twin Towers, engraved with the names of the 2,982 victims of the 1993 and 2001 attacks on the site (see picture of the future memorial at the end of this post).  I don’t know if it counts as a museum, but Paul and I are looking forward to seeing it.

Guided tour of the WTC site

In summary, both the Museum of Jewish Heritage and the Tribute WTC Visitors Center were heartfelt, effective museums that used personal items and intimate stories to evoke the tragedies they covered.  For the sake of your emotional well being, we would not suggest that you see them both on the same day, but we learned a lot from each and would certainly recommend them individually.

Model of the future World Trade Center memorial, designed by Michael Arad and Peter Walker

Images in this post, from the top: Becks on Vacation, gift of Elsa Beck, photograph in 1933 Crikvenica, Croatia; Gardens of Stone, by Andy Goldsworthy.  The garden consists of trees growing out of stone, and was planted by the artist, Holocaust survivors and their families; Yellow star, Jood, Gift of Mimi Weiner, Dutch; the destruction of the twin towers of the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001; exterior of the Museum of Jewish Heritage; Alder Family Having Tea, gift of Peter Warren in memory of his mother Heda Lieberman, photograph in 1924 Austria, Vienna; Joseph Fuchs, gift of Robert Marx, photograph in 1945 Germany, Indersdorf;  Louis Bannet, photograph in Holland 1938.  Louis Bannet was a Jewish musician known as the “Dutch Louis Armstrong.”  After the German invasion, Bannet was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau, but survived as a member of the orchestra, entertaining his captors and accompaning the death march of many of the 1.3 million who perished in the gas chambers during this period. Most of Bannet’s own family members were killed at Auschwitz. After the war, Bannet married a fellow survivor and eventually settled in Canada, where he continued to play music. He passed away in 2002, after recording 17 albums; exterior of the Tribute WTC Visitors Center; wall of photographs of people who lost their lives on 9/11; girder from the WTC site; Eleven Tears, the American Express memorial by Ken Smith; guided tour of the WTC site; future World Trade Center Memorial, designed by Michael Arad and Peter Walker.

Derfner Judaica Museum/Art at the Hebrew Home

4/23/2010, Friday

MUSEUMS:

Hebrew Home at Riverdale:

  Art at the Home ……………...….. 30 min

  Derfner Judaica Museum …….… 30 min

COST:

Hebrew Home at Riverdale:

  Art Collection ………………....…. Free

  Derfner Judaica Museum …….… Free

Part of the fun of seeing ALL the museums of NYC is that, in addition to visiting popular attractions (like MOMA), we also get to tour some very unusual, hidden and even mysterious parts of the city we would never otherwise see, like unused subway tunnels (New York Transit Museum), an abandoned speakeasy (Museum of the American Gangster), and the inner sanctum of a 100 year old secret society of bookbinders (Grolier Club).  The location of today’s museum doesn’t sound as exotic as these, but it certainly isn’t a place we would normally visit, and, according to Paul, it was “the creepiest place so far.”

Today’s museums were located in a very large, very wealthy and very private retirement home, the Hebrew Home at Riverdale.  Riverdale is a neghborhood in the Bronx, but this quiet, leafy historic neighborhood on the bluffs overlooking the Hudson feels so far from the bustling urban-ness of the Bronx that it might as well be on the moon.  To reach the museum, we started on typical Bronx streets, full of people, elevated train noise and traffic, but after we turned and began our descent toward the river, the densely packed brick apartment complexes of central Bronx abruptly gave way to spacious graceful private homes, partially hidden behind immaculately prunned shrubbery and ancient trees casting heavy shadows on the road.  The roads narrowed, the people vanished, all street noise faded out, and by the time we reached the retirement home, the only noises were the wind in the trees, birdsong, and the faint sound of distant water.

A large black fence surrounds this complex in the forest, monitored by a security system that would do a prison proud.  All visitors must check in at the heavily guarded gate and submit to a thorough security check, including ID check, justification of visit and car search if deemed necessary.  There wasn’t a cavity search, but it felt like maybe the guard who did that was off for the day.  If you’re allowed past the checkpoint, you’re given a visitor’s pass and a narrow window of time to complete your business.  Neither Paul nor I asked what would happen if we stayed past our allotted time, and we knew we didn’t want to find out.


After the interrogation, we proceeded into the complex.  Despite the map provided at the gate, we got lost instantly.  In case you haven’t figured it out yet, this is not your average retirement home, and the place is huge.  Located on 19 manicured acres overlooking the Hudson River, the Hebrew Home has over 3,000 elderly residents, a fully staffed hospital, counseling center and rehab facility, and of course what we were there for: a 5,000 piece art collection, a Jewish history museum, and one of the larger sculpture gardens in NYC. 


There are virtually no signs (maybe they’re considered tacky?), so we found the first museum by entering one of the larger buildings and wandering around.  It turned out to be part of the hospital, so we had the bizarre and fairly disturbing experience of dodging gurneys and gowned patients while trying to find someone who didn’t look busy saving someone’s life to ask where any of the museums were.  Eventually we stumbled upon a lofty atrium-like structure overlooking the river called the Jacob Reingold Pavilion, the location of the Derfner Judaica Museum.

The objects in the Derfner Judaica Museum were originally the private collection of wealthy residents Ralph and Leuba Baum, and donated to the home upon their death.  This is how the home acquired most, if not all, of its extensive art collection, and after you realize that sad fact you begin to see every piece of art as representing a death at the home, just one of the many things that made this an intensely eerie experience.

A refugee from Nazi persecution, Ralph Baum (d. 1984) and his wife, Leuba (d. 1997) collected objects used by European Jews before the Holocaust, trying to persevere some of the history and memory of what was lost.  It’s an impressive collection of artifacts, ranging from ceremonial objects like elaborately decorated Torah cases and Hanukah lamps, to more personal items like kitchen spice containers and playing cards.  Paul thought it seemed the most personal of the Jewish museums we’ve seen, consisting largely of small but meaningful things people carried with them as they fled their homes, like a bridal belt worn by all of the women of a family on their wedding day, or a girl’s embroidered Matzah bag.  The object that made the greatest impression on me was an old Torah scroll, yellowed with age and partially charred, but still intact.  It had been pulled from the rubble of a synagogue near Hamburg burned to the ground by the Nazis on Kristall-nacht, the only one of 13 scrolls to survive.  It had been stored in a local police station, and when Ralph Baum returned to his hometown after the war, it was presented to him, the only survivor left to claim it.

In addition to the Judaica museum, the Hebrew Home also has an extensive art collection, comprised of 5,000 works by renowned artists such as Pablo Picasso, Frank Stella, Andy Warhol, and Joan Mitchell, as well as a large sculpture garden with breathtaking views of the Hudson River and Palisades. The art collection is recognized as a museum, but displayed in common areas throughout the complex.  To see it Paul and I essentially had to tour the retirement home.  I particularly liked the Warhol sketches of famous Jews, and the exhibition of Rachel Leibman’s collages made from images of ancient manuscripts.  Interspersed throughout the halls are also displays supposedly for children, including a huge model train garden designed by landscape architect Paul Busse, an antique doll collection, and a wall of creepy porcelain birds (they just stare at you with beady black eyes).  The art was nice, but it was difficult to just wander through other people’s parlors, feeling like outsiders as friendly residents asked whom we were there to see.  Paul had to constantly fight the urge to go talk to all those lonely people.

Our take on things: on the plus side, there were no crowds and the collections were interesting, particularly the Judaica museum and, oddly, the model train set.  However, their location in a swank retirement home, while certainly novel, made them difficult to get to and awkward to view.  We just could not shake the feeling that we were trespassers here.

Images in this post, from the top: three sculptures in the "River walk" sculpture garden of the Hebrew Home at Riverdale; "Illuminations" by Rachel Leibman; Torah scroll from Elmshorn Germany; “Artistic Palestine Play-Cards” from 1920 Jerusalem replaces the four usual suits with four symbols of religion and the land (fig, pomegranate, star of David and menorah). The kings are Ahasuerus, David, Saul and Solomon. The queens include Esther and the Queen of Sheba; "Olde West Garden Railroad" by Paul Busse, a model railroad depicting life in the 19th century American frontier; and Hanukkah Lamp, Bezalel School, Jerusalem, ca. 1920-29.

The Jewish Museum

2/6/2010, Saturday continued 

MUSEUM: The Jewish Museum 

TIME: 2 hr

COST: Free on saturdays 

Pauline’s note: Paul’s favorite piece of art that we own is a photography print by Man Ray.  I hate it and have exiled it to his office.  (It was going to be in the bathroom, but Paul argued that it might get water damaged.)  The Jewish Museum has a large exhibit devoted to Man Ray this year, so Paul was the logical choice to blog about this museum and his favorite artist.  (Our controversial artwork in question is “Larmes” (Tears) 1930 by Man Ray, see picture.  Feel free to weigh in on the argument in the comments.) 

Paul here: Our second museum of the day was a trip back to Museum Mile and the wonderful mansion/museums.  There are actually quite a few Jewish museums in NYC, which befits the huge impact the Jewish community has had on this city. This is the biggest and most celebrated. The Jewish Museum is located in a renovated Gothic Mansion that used to be the home of Frieda Schiff Warburg, a trustee of the Jewish seminary where the original museum was housed.  It moved to the current site in 1944, and has four floors of exhibition space and a café in the basement.  While some of the building has been preserved inside (particularly the 2nd floor), the bulk has been changed to a clean, modern museum aesthetic.

The museum was high on my list because the subject of one of the current exhibits is one of my absolute favorite artists, Man Ray. We went on a Saturday, which is always free. Saturday is the Sabbath, so the store and café were closed. Also, there are no audio tours available on the Sabbath.  Most people took the stairs, but there is a “Sabbath elevator” that runs automatically from floor to floor, with no button pushing necessary.  For those who don’t know, the Sabbath is a day of rest and reflection; all work is forbidden.  It’s an important observation to many Jews, and it inspired Pauline and I to think about our workaholic ways.

The first floor housed the retrospective of Man Ray, a Jewish-American artist who was a major force in the Modernist, Dada and Surrealist movements.  Born Emmanuel Radnitzky in New Jersey, Man Ray experimented with all different art media, including poetry, painting, printed arts, sculpture, photography, performance art, and just about any other art form you could imagine.  He prided himself in not being pigeonholed into any single artistic trend or technique.  He often felt penned in by his critics, who defined him and thus confined him.  One of the first works you see is a testimonial to that: a life mask of Man Ray stuffed in a box and confined by newspapers on all sides, creating a disturbing, claustrophobic piece.  Man Ray’s work is ever changing and challenging, but the exhibition was a pretty complete representation of it. 

Pauline does not like Man Ray.  At best, she “doesn’t see the genius of it all”; at worst she finds it offensive.  However, I think he is one the more overlooked American artists of the 20th century.  His maverick and mercurial nature made him hard to categorize, and I don’t like all of his works, but really, it’s his spirit that I love.  He never seemed to settle in to a normal life and artistically he alternated between popularity and obscurity, but he always refused to be anything but true to his own quirky, absurdist views. 

The top floors of the Jewish Museum are one huge exhibit on the long history of the Jewish people: how they started, where they went, and how they exist today.  It is truly expansive, covering thousands of years.  The over 800 artifacts were impressive, and included primitive ancient artifacts, a replica of an early temple, and one of the most amazing collections of menorahs I've ever seen, ranging from intricate silver antique menorahs from eastern Europe to ultra -modern ones made out of copper drain pipe with a plastic pro-wrestler figurine as a figurehead.  One very impressive collection was the “Danzig” collection consisting of almost every important piece from the city of Danzig (now Gadansk) in Poland/Germany.  Its one of the few intact collections remaining from Eastern Europe, shipped to the US just before the start of WWII, before the Nazis destroyed most evidence of Jewish existence in that region.

Those who know me know I am a bit of a history buff, and I went into this hoping to get a good introduction to Jewish history, something I really don’t know much about.  There were a lot of history exhibits and discussion of the Judaic Faith and some of the branches- primarily the European Ashkenazi and Sephardic Judaism, but I wish they spent more time on Jewish Mysticism and the Cabbala and the text on the displays is very limited.  Both Pauline and I found ourselves wishing we came on a day we could have gotten the audio tour.  There were guides giving tours, and we found ourselves attempting to trail them so we could overhear.  Otherwise, we would have been lost.

The second floor felt like it was right out of the Cooper-Hewitt Design Museum. The exhibit, called Reinventing Ritual: Contemporary Art and Design for Jewish Life surveys the explosion of new Jewish rituals, art, and objects that’s occurred since the mid-1990s.  Contemporary artists and designers transformed the acts of Jewish ritual into new forms and reinterpreted ritual items, such as spice holders, Yamakas, wedding dresses and menorahs.  The projects included industrial design, metalwork, ceramics, video, drawing, comics, sculpture, and textiles from all over the world. The alterations of the spaces, designs and situations in which ritual is performed made this a fascinating and compelling exhibit and made me think about the how and why of the rituals we perform by rote. 

All in all, the Jewish Museum was a good mix of history and art, but we enjoyed the temporary art exhibits the most.  We felt that the history exhibits were largely for people who already knew a lot about Jewish history. 


Pictures in this post, from the top:  
A collage of Hanukkah lamps from the Jewish Museum: Hanukkah Lamp, Josef Kohn, Vienna (Austria), 1872-1921, silver: repoussé, traced, punched, and cast.  (A three-dimensional figure of a peacock set within a frame, as if on stage.)  Hanukkah Lamp, Eastern Europe (?), 18th-early 19th century, Copper alloy: cast and gilded.  Hanukkah Lamp, ZK, Brody, Galicia (Ukraine), 1787, silver: repoussé, pierced, appliqué, parcel-gilt, and cast; copper alloy.  (The form and decoration of this lamp is derived from Torah arks of Polish synagogues of the 18th century. A "balcony" under the ark doors supports the oil containers in the form of leaping lions. Below, the double-headed eagle of Austria proudly spreads its wings.)  Hanukkah Lamp, Possibly Fez (Morocco), 19th century.  Hanukkah Lamp, Eastern Europe, early 19th century (?), copper alloy: cast.  (Depicts the Garden of Eden surrounded by a fence and palm trees. In the center is the Tree of Knowledge, filled with fruit, a snake wound around its trunk.)  Hanukkah Lamp, Italy, late 19th-early 20th century, copper alloy.  Hanukkah Lamp, Paris, France after 1917, copper alloy (The body of this lamp is made of two shell casings, while the candleholders consist of bullet cartridges.)  Hanukkah Lamp, Marek Szwarc (French, b. Poland), Paris, France, 1920s.  Hanukkah Lamp, Central Anti-Atlas Mountains (Morocco), 19th century, copper alloy: cast and enameled.  Hanukkah Lamp, India, end of 19th century, copper alloy.  (Lamps in the form of the Star of David are characteristic of the Bene Israel community near Bombay.)  

“Larmes” (Tears) 1930, by Man Ray; “Cadeau” (Gift) 1921 by Man Ray, “Black and White” 1936 by Man Ray, “Le violin de Ingres” (Ingres's Violin) 1924 by Man Ray; "Hevruta-Mituta" 2007 by Hadas Kruk and Anat Stein (Plastic chess board and thirty-two knitted skullcaps). 

A collage of modern Hanukkah lamps: Hanukkah Lamp, Ludwig Yehuda Wolpert (American, b. Germany), Jerusalem, Israel, 1950-55, Copper alloy: repoussé.   Maquette for a Hanukkah Lamp, David Weinrib (American), Stony Point, New York, United States, 1989, Copper; steel; wood; wax. (This piece was created as a maquette for a Hanukkah lamp for Temple Beth El in Spring Valley, New York. It is made of "found" industrial materials.) Menorahmorph, Karim Rashid (American, b. Egypt), New York, United States, 2004, Silicone and stainless steel.  Hanukkah Lamp, United States, c. 1926-1940, Copper alloy: cast and gilded.  (The letters comprising the candleholders spell out the name of a Jewish woman's organization, Ivriah.)  Hanukkah Lamp, Silver: pierced glass, by Ludwig Yehuda Wolpert (American, b. Germany), Jerusalem, Israel, 1953 (Inscription: "To you, praise is fitting" from "Ma'oz Tzur").  Hanukkah Lamp, Manufacturer: Orivit-Aktiengesellschaft, Germany, 1900-1905, white metal: cast and silver-plated; glass: mold formed.