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Botanical Zionism at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life

Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

Special Guest: Dana von Suffrin (LMU-Munich) Currently on view at The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life is the exhibition “The Secret Language of Flowers. Botanical Drawings from Israel, 1949-1950”. This exhibition is curated by Dr. Francesco Spagnolo. The exhibition displays the works of Shmuel (Samuel) Lerner (1890-1981), a Californian artist born in the […]

PopUp Exhibition | Helen Burke, the Artistry of Memory, and the Impermanence of Memorials

Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

Helen Burke (1916-1997) was the artist-in-residence at the Swig Camp Institute, a sleep-away camp for teenagers operated by the Union of American Hebrew Congregations (now known as the Union for Reform Judaism) in Saratoga, California. Ms. Burke taught generations of campers the art of metal sculpturing and welding. She inspired them to create a Holocaust […]

PopUp Exhibition | Andres Waissman & Gachi Prieto on Art, Memory, and Argentina

Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

Join us for the 2015-2016 inaugural PopUp Exhibition, learn about this year’s program, and meet Argentine artist Andres Waissman (Buenos Aires, 1955), who will be interviewed by Buenos Aires gallerist, Gachi Prieto, about his work, and the role of art in contemporary Argentina. The presentation will be accompanied by the display of Waissman’s painting, La […]

Fall Exhibition Opening | Living by the Book: The Jewish Bible and the Everyday Power of Text

Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life cordially invites you to an opening reception for Living by The Book The Jewish Bible & the Everyday Power of Text Wednesday, September 9, 2015 at 5 pm 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley Jonah and the Whale at the Port of Haifa.jpg E. Abeshaus (1939–2008), Jonah and the […]

Depth of Field: Sephardic Identities on Screen | Toledo: El Secreto Oculto, Israel, 2008, 90 min.

Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

Toledo: El Secreto Oculto Dir. Jack Matitiahu, Documentary. Israel, 2008. 70 min. The city of Toledo was famous for its rich cultural and historical heritage; a city in which three major cultures met, intertwined and enriched each other. The movie Toledo - the Hidden Secret is a meeting of the past and the present and […]

PopUp Exhibition | Noa Bar Gabai on Orientalism in Israeli Culture

Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

Noa Bar Gabai is a doctoral candidate in Comparative Literature at UCLA. Her dissertation focuses on “Messianism and Masortiyut: The Poetics of Traditionalism in Mizrahi Hebrew”. In this PopUp Exhibition, Noa will put “orientalist” Jewish art and objects from Yemen and North Africa that are part of The Magnes Collection in conversation with her research. […]

PopUp Exhibition | Laurie Pearce on “By the Rivers of Babylon”

Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

Laurie E. Pearce is a Lecturer in Assyriology at Berkeley. Her areas of speciality include the economic and social history of Mesopotamia in the later part of the first millennium BCE. She studies legal texts written in Hellenistic Uruk: these texts form the basis of her project on  Hellenistic Babylonia: Texts, Images and Names, which can […]

PopUp Exhibition | Susanna Zaraysky on Ladino in Sarajevo

Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

Filmmaker Susanna Zaraysky co-directed the film, Saved by Language, which tells the story of Moris Albahari, a Sephardic Jew from Sarajevo whose knowledge of Ladino helped him survive the Holocaust. Susanna’s work aims to contextualize Ladino as an endangered Jewish language. The PopUp Exhibition will feature objects from The Magnes Collection including a Chumash (Pentateuch) […]

Book Talk | Michael Berkowitz on Jews and Photography in Britain

Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

San Francisco State University, Jewish Studies & The Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life present a book talk by Michael Berkowitz Jews and Photography in Britain Wednesday, October 21, 5:30 PM Reception to follow Michael Berkowitz is a Professor of Modern Jewish History at University College, London. His current work on the engagement of […]

Book Talk | Simon Goodman, The Orpheus Clock

Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

The passionate, gripping, true story of one man’s single-minded quest to reclaim what the Nazis stole from his family, their beloved art collection, and to restore their legacy. Simon Goodman’s grandparents came from German-Jewish banking dynasties and perished in concentration camps. And that’s almost all he knew about them—his father rarely spoke of their family […]

PopUp Exhibition | Jon Voss on the Power of Digital History

Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

Jon is the Strategic Partnerships Director at Shift (formerly We Are What We Do) , a non-profit that allows a global community of individuals to share historical documents that matter to them. HistoryPin was created with initial funding support from Google (2011) and consists of a “web platform and a series of local volunteer ­led […]

Depth of Field: Sephardic Identities on Screen | Saved by Language, USA, 2014, 53 min.

Magnes Collection of Jewish Life and Art 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley, CA, United States

Saved by Language Dir. Susanna Zaraysky and Bryan Kirschen. Documentary. USA, 2014. 53 min.   Saved by Language tells the story of Moris Albahari, a Sephardic Jew from Sarajevo (born 1930), who spoke Ladino (Judeo-Spanish), his mother tongue, to survive the Holocaust. Moris used Ladino to communicate with an Italian colonel who helped him escape to […]