Gallery Spotlights

with Magnes Senior Curator Dr. Alissa Schapiro

11:50 am, 12:50 pm, 1:50 pm | Galleries

Jewish Arts and Bookfest
Sunday, May 3, 2026

at UC Berkeley’s Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life, 2121 Allston Way, Berkeley,  CA

Meet up with the Magnes’s new Senior Curator to explore select objects currently on view in our galleries.

11:50 am | Peachy and Mark Levy Family Judaica Collection in Time Capsules

Join Dr. Alissa Schapiro in Time Capsules: Exploring the Permanent Collection for a short curatorial discussion about the objects on display from the Peachy and Mark Levy Family Judaica Collection. Acquired in 2015, the collection represents the largest donation of objects–400 ritual objects–to the Magnes since its founding in 1962, and the largest addition to its holdings since the purchase of the Siegfried S. Strauss collection in 1967.

On view: Torah crown, Vienna, Austria, 1899-1922. Silver. Peachy and Mark Levy Family Judaica Collection, 2015.6.80. Photo by Sibila Savage.

12:50 pm | Roman Vishniac in Flowing through Time and Tradition

Join Dr. Schapiro in Flowing through Time and Tradition for a short curatorial discussion about Roman Vishniac.

In his book A Vanished World (1983), photographer Roman Vishniac published some of the most iconic images of Jewish life in Europe before the Holocaust, documenting a world that would soon vanish. He describes this image as “Softening stale bread Vienna after the ‘Anschluss’, 1938” (p. 177). Behind the print Vishniac wrote: “In Leopoldstadt, the Jewish quarters in Vienna –The bread is too hard. Printed in 1935 Roman Vishniac.”

Born in Russia, Vishniac lived in Berlin from 1920 to 1939, where he began experimenting with photography. Just before WWII, he documented Jewish life across Europe. After fleeing Nazi Germany, he arrived in New York in 1940 and photographed American life. In 1947, he returned to Europe to document the war’s aftermath and displaced persons camps. Back in the U.S., he became a pioneer in photomicroscopy, combining photography and science.

Featured: Roman Vishniac (1897–1990), [Man Softening Bread], Vienna, Austria, 1930s. Silver gelatin print. Gift of Mara Vishniac Kohn, MVK.HGW.443.2008.

1:50 pm | Food will Win the War in Flowing through Time and Tradition

Join Dr. Schapiro in Flowing through Time and Tradition for a short curatorial discussion about the U.S. Food Administration’s  poster, End the War with Food by Charles Edward Chambors.

Immigrants gaze at the Statue of Liberty, the symbol of hope, in New York Harbor. Yet the Yiddish caption suggests a more complex wartime reality: “You came here seeking freedom. You must now help preserve it. Wheat is needed for the Allies. Waste nothing.”

Printed in Yiddish, Italian, and English, this message reflects the tension between finding acceptance in American society while still needing to prove loyalty.

Born in Iowa, Charles Edward Chambers was an advertising and story illustrator for major magazines and many authors.

Featured: Charles Edward Chambers (1883–1941), End the War with Food, Rusling Wood, Litho for the United States Food Administration: New York, 1918. Offset lithograph on paper. Museum Purchase, 75.225. Photo by Sibila Savage.

About Dr. Alissa Schapiro

Dr. Alissa Schapiro is Senior Curator at the Magnes Collection of Jewish Art and Life. In her previous role as Curator and Collections Specialist at the Skirball Cultural Center in Los Angeles, Schapiro oversaw the museum’s collection and curated exhibitions including TORN Project by Susan Lerner, This Light of Ours: Activist Photographers of the Civil Rights Movement, and RECLAIMED: A Family Painting. Schapiro also co-curated Life Magazine and the Power of Photography at the Princeton University Art Museum and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and she has contributed to exhibitions and catalogues for the Art Institute of Chicago, Tate Britain, the Milwaukee Art Museum, and the Terra Foundation for American Art.

Schapiro regularly lectures and publishes on the relationship between twentieth-century art and antisemitism, and her scholarly research has been supported by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the Holocaust Educational Foundation, and the Feinstein Center for American Jewish History. She holds a B.A. in Art History from Harvard University, an M.A. in Curatorial Studies from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, and a Ph.D. in Art History from Northwestern University.