Jews, Money, Myth @ Jewish Museum London

Jews, Money, Myth
Jewish Museum London
Through 7 July 2019

Jews, Money, Myth, a major exhibition at Jewish Museum London, explores the role of money in Jewish life and its often vexed place in relations between Jews and non-Jews, from the time of Jesus to the 21st century. It examines the origins of some of the longest running and deeply entrenched antisemitic stereotypes: the theological roots of the association of Jews with money; the myths and reality of the medieval Jewish moneylender; and the place of Jews – real and imagined – in commerce, capitalism and finance up to the present day.

This cutting-edge exhibition reflects on over 2,000 years of history, drawing together manuscripts, prints, Jewish ritual and ceremonial objects, art, film, literature and cultural ephemera, from board games and cartoons to costumes and figurines. Exhibits from the museum’s collection are complemented by loans from Europe, North America and Israel. A highlight of the exhibition is Rembrandt van Rijn’s painting, Judas Returning the Thirty Pieces of Silver, 1629, an early yet artistically mature work from a private collection that is rarely seen in the UK. Contemporary and newly commissioned artworks, including an archive-based video piece by Jeremy Deller, reflect on the exhibition themes.

The story of Judas Iscariot, betraying Jesus for 30 pieces of silver, widely embraced in Christian iconography as a symbol of self-seeking greed, and which has propelled anti-Jewish stereotypes to this day, forms an important feature of the exhibition. Rare and early artworks spanning almost 500 years reveal the changing representations of this story and shed light on relations between Christians and Jews.

Throughout history there have been both rich and poor Jews. The exhibition shows how Jewish wealth and poverty have been created by circumstances as well as by the activity and acumen of Jews themselves – rather than ‘Jewishness’ itself. Pushed into unpopular economic roles such as usury, some Jews lent money for interest in the Medieval period; Jewish merchants and bankers were drawn to London in the mid-late Seventeenth Century; and tens of thousands came as poor economic migrants in the Eighteenth Century. They improvised a livelihood, begging and peddling cheap goods in town and country. These contrasting roles gave rise to stereotypes that took hold of the public imagination and have shown remarkable longevity: two are easily recognisable in well-known literary characters such as Shakespeare’s money lender Shylock, and Dickens’ Fagin who traded in stolen goods.

Jews, Money, Myth explores how stereotypes linking Jews with money and power evolved in different political contexts and have been exploited for different ends. Nazi propaganda took these old myths to portray Jews as a threat to the world and as ‘the enemy within’ that sought to destroy Germany. The caricature of the powerful, rich Jew continues to inform conspiracy theories and to recur in political propaganda, cartoons, artworks and on social media.

The exhibition explores the social significance and symbolism of money in Jewish life. Ancient Judean coins from the first century BCE highlight their use as an expression of Jewish identity in resisting Roman rule. Ceremonial objects highlight the importance attached to charitable giving. ‘Tzedakah’, the word commonly used for charity, literally means ‘righteousness’: it conveys a commitment to giving which is embedded in numerous Jewish rituals and religious practices.

Abigail Morris, Director of the Jewish Museum, said:

“Myths and stereotypes have origins, and this exhibition draws on objects from over 2000 years to go to the roots of Jewish practices around money. At the same time, it shows how certain dangerous, even deadly, interpretations emerged and still proliferate around the world. As a museum dedicated to the history and culture of Jews in Britain, we are more aware than ever of the importance of providing a safe space to consider and challenge such stereotypes, if we are to combat hatred and challenge ignorance.”

The exhibition has been developed by the Jewish Museum in collaboration with the Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism at Birkbeck, University of London.

Professor David Feldman, Director of the Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism said:

“Jews, Money, Myth explores the significance and role of money in the secular and religious life of Jews from the Biblical era to the present day. In doing so it confronts and debunks the stereotypes of Jews’ connections with money and power that give rise to some of the most deeply rooted antisemitic images in circulation. Visitors to this bold exhibition will be at once informed and challenged.”

Jews, Money, Myth - Exhibition Catalogue

© Jewish Museum London and 

Pears Institute for the study of Antisemitism, Birkbeck, University of London

An illustrated book accompanies the exhibition, with contributions from international scholars and artists exploring some of its key themes, including the literary historian and author, Stephen Greenblatt and artist, Roee Rosen.

JEWISH MUSEUM LONDON
Raymond Burton House, 129 – 131 Albert Street, London NW1 7NB
www.jewishmuseum.org.uk

Roman Vishniac Rediscovered @ The Photographers’ Gallery & Jewish Museum London

Roman Vishniac Rediscovered

The Photographers’ Gallery, London

Jewish Museum London

26 October 2018 - 24 February 2019

Presented simultaneously at The Photographers’ Gallery and Jewish Museum London, Roman Vishniac Rediscovered is the first UK retrospective of Russian born American photographer, ROMAN VISHNIAC (1897–1990).

An extraordinarily versatile and innovative photographer, Roman Vishniac is best known for having created one of the most widely recognised and reproduced photographic records of Jewish life in Eastern Europe between the two World Wars.Featuring many of his most iconic works, this comprehensive exhibition further introduces recently discovered and lesser-known chapters of his photographic career from the early 1920s to the late 1970s. The cross-venue exhibition presents radically diverse bodies of work and positions Roman Vishniac as one of the most important social documentary photographers of the 20th century whose work also sits within a broader tradition of 1930s modernist photography.  

Born in Pavlovsk, Russia in 1897 to a Jewish family Roman Vishniac was raised in Moscow. On his seventh birthday, he was given a camera and a microscope which began a lifelong fascination with photography and science.  He began to conduct early scientific experiments attaching the camera to the microscope and as a teenager became an avid amateur photographer and student of biology, chemistry and zoology.  In 1920, following the Bolshevik Revolution, he immigrated to Berlin where he joined some of the city’s many flourishing camera clubs.  Inspired by the cosmopolitanism and rich cultural experimentation in Berlin at this time, Roman Vishniac used his camera to document his surroundings. This early body of work reflects the influence of European modernism with his framing and compositions favouring sharp angles and dramatic use of light and shade to inform his subject matter.

Roman Vishniac’s development as a photographer coincided with the enormous political changes occurring in Germany, which he steadfastly captured in his images. They represent an unsettling visual foreboding of the growing signs of oppression, the loss of rights for Jews, the rise of Nazism in Germany, the insidious propaganda - swastika flags and military parades, which were taking over both the streets and daily life. German Jews routinely had their businesses boycotted, were banned from many public places and expelled from Aryanised schools. They were also prevented from pursuing professions in law, medicine, teaching, and photography, among many other indignities and curtailments of civil liberties. Roman Vishniac recorded this painful new reality through uncompromising images showing Jewish soup kitchens, schools and hospitals, immigration offices and Zionist agrarian training camps, his photos tracking the speed with which the city changed from an open, intellectual society to one where militarism and fascism were closing in.

Social and political documentation quickly became a focal point of his work and drew the attention of organisations wanting to raise awareness and gain support for the Jewish population. In 1935, Roman Vishniac was commissioned by the world’s largest Jewish relief organisation, the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC), to photograph impoverished Jewish communities in Eastern Europe. These images were intended to support relief efforts and were used in fundraising campaigns for an American donor audience. When the war broke out only a few years later, his photos served increasingly urgent refugee efforts, before finally, at the end of the war and the genocide enacted by Nazi Germany, Roman Vishniac’s images became the most comprehensive photographic record by a single photographer of a vanished world.

Roman Vishniac left Europe in 1940 and arrived in New York with his family on New Year’s Day, 1941. He continued to record the impact of World War II throughout the 1940s and 50s in particular focusing on the arrival of Jewish refugees and Holocaust survivors in the US, but also looking at other immigrant communities including Chinese Americans. In 1947, he returned to Europe to document refugees and relief efforts in Jewish Displaced Persons camps and also to witness the ruins of his former hometown, Berlin. He also continued his biological studies and supplemented his income by teaching and writing.

In New York, Roman Vishniac established himself as a freelance photographer and built a successful portrait studio on Manhattan’s Upper West Side.  At the same time he dedicated himself to scientific research, resuming his interest in Photomicroscopy. This particular application of photography became the primary focus of his work during the last 45 years of his life. By the mid-1950s, he was regarded as a pioneer in the field, developing increasingly sophisticated techniques for photographing and filming microscopic life forms. Romn Vishniac was appointed Professor of Biology and Art at several universities and his groundbreaking images and scientific research were published in hundreds of magazines and books.

Although he was mainly embedded in the scientific community, Roman Vishniac was a keen observer and scholar of art, culture, and history and would have been aware of developments in photography going on around him and the work of his contemporaries. In 1955, famed photographer and museum curator Edward Steichen featured several of Roman Vishniac’s photographs in the influential book and travelling exhibition The Family of Man shown at the Museum of Modern Art.  Steichen later describes the importance of Vishniac’s work. ''[He]…gives a last-minute look at the human beings he photographed just before the fury of Nazi brutality exterminated them. The resulting photographs are among photography's finest documents of a time and place.”

Roman Vishniac Rediscovered offers a timely reappraisal of Roman Vishniac’s vast photographic output and legacy and brings together – for the first time – his complete works including recently discovered vintage prints, rare and ‘lost’ film footage from his pre-war period, contact sheets, personal correspondence, original magazine publications, newly created exhibition prints as well as his acclaimed photomicroscopy.  

Drawn from the Roman Vishniac Archive at the International Center of Photography, New York and curated by Maya Benton in collaboration with The Photographers’ Gallery curator, Anna Dannemann and Jewish Museum London curator, Morgan Wadsworth-Boyle, each venue provides additional contextual material to illuminate the works on display and bring the artist, his works and significance to the attention of UK audiences.

Roman Vishniac Rediscovered is organised by the International Center of Photography (ICP), New York.

THE PHOTOGRAPHER'S GALLERY

16-18 Ramillies Street, London W1F 7LW

thephotographersgallery.org.uk

JEWISH MUSEUM LONDON

Raymond Burton House, 129 – 131 Albert Street, London NW1 7NB

www.jewishmuseum.org.uk