Between the Lines: Too Jewish or Not Jewish Enough?
Part of Between the Lines: Author Conversations from The Library of JTS
Tuesday, November 12, 2024
1:00–2:00 p.m. ET
Online
Eminent art historian Jeffrey Abt joins JTS for a discussion of his new book on the Jewish Museum of New York, which was founded in 1904 in The Library of the Jewish Theological Seminary and housed there for more than four decades.
Too Jewish or Not Jewish Enough? explores the origins of the Jewish Museum of New York and its evolution from collecting and displaying Jewish ritual objects, to Jewish art, to exhibiting avant-garde art devoid of Jewish content, created by non-Jews. The oldest, continuously functioning Jewish museum, it originated with a Judaica donation to JTS in 1904. The collection’s growth and increasing importance led to its relocation to the museum’s present site on Fifth Avenue in the 1940s.
The Jewish Museum’s origins and development reflect changes in Jewish society over the twentieth century as it grappled with choices between religion and secularism, particularism and universalism, and ethnic pride and assimilation. Two of JTS’s leaders, Cyrus Adler and Rabbi Louis Finkelstein, were instrumental in this story.
About the Author
Jeffrey Abt is a Professor Emeritus in the James Pearson Duffy Department of Art, Art History, and Design at Wayne State University. He earned BFA and MFA degrees in painting at Drake University, and he subsequently studied at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion in Jerusalem. Prior to Wayne State, he worked at the Wichita Art Museum; the Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago; and Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art. An artist and writer, he has exhibited widely in the United States and abroad, and his artwork is in several museum and corporate collections. Abt’s scholarship, supported with numerous grants and fellowships, focuses on museum history and criticism. His books include American Egyptologist: The Life of James Henry Breasted and the Creation of His Oriental Institute (University of Chicago Press, 2012), Valuing Detroit’s Art Museum: A History of Fiscal Abandonment and Rescue (Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), and Too Jewish or Not Jewish Enough: Ritual Objects and Avant-Garde Art at the Jewish Museum of New York (Berghahn, 2024).
