Israeli-born artist Jac Lahav’s “48 Jews” has toured cities around the nation. This March, paintings from the collection are making their way to Milwaukee – with the portraits including people from Jewish Wisconsin.
“I started the series thinking about my own personal history,” Lahav said. “This was at the time around where that Adam Sandler song came out, and I thought, that’s all I really know about famous Jews, and so I started looking into it more.”
Lahav’s “48 Jews,” which uses portraiture to highlight the diversity and pluralistic nature of the Jewish diaspora, will be displayed at Jewish Museum Milwaukee from March 6–Sept. 6. Among art featuring the likes of Anne Frank, Elvis Presley, and Franz Kafka are several painted just for Wisconsin.
Since its beginnings in 2006, two pillars have guided “48 Jews”– the distinction between portrait and person, and the educational value of the subjects’ biographies. These pillars have travelled with Lahav’s work to New York City, Miami and overseas to Berlin.
However, the antisemitism of recent years inclined Lahav to create a new pillar – one exploring Jewish diversity. “After Oct. 7, most of my liberal cohort was not interested in the fact that I was Jewish,” he said. “They don’t really know anything about Judaism, and the model for being Jewish, in a lot of their minds, is a white Ashkenazi European.”
Jewish Museum Milwaukee’s Chief Curator, Molly Dubin, had “been aware of [Lahav’s] 48 Jews project for quite a while,” and was aware of the widespread misconceptions Lahav was challenging. “As I was thinking about exhibits that would be engaging but also allow us to foster conversation about some of the issues going on in the Jewish community,” she said, “ exploring the diversity of Jewish identity became something that I thought would be a very good idea.”
In conversation with the Jewish Museum Milwaukee, Lahav searched for subjects that don’t match the pervasive Ashkenazi profile. These additions include basketball player and coach Amar’e Stoudemire and Confucianist scholar Zhao Yingcheng. Dubin also emphasized the importance of including women in the collection, championing the addition of author Emma Lazarus. “There’s a plurality to our identities,” Lahav said. “Both in terms of skin color and in the way we celebrate being Jewish.”
A little over six months ago, Lahav began to work on representing some of the most iconic figures from Jewish Wisconsin to accompany the names listed above. “I like working within a space and thinking about where [my art] is shown. So I’ve been working towards this show for a while, and trying to engage with the history of Milwaukee.” The list of iconic Jewish Wisconsinites painted just for this exhibit includes: Helen Daniels Bader, Lizzie Black Kander, Madame Goldye Steiner, Gene Wilder, Bob Dylan, and Golda Meir – whose portrait will be accompanied by physical artifacts from the museum’s archives.
Brief written biographies will be available throughout the exhibit, but don’t discount the power of the portraits alone. In Lahav’s words, “a portrait is a frozen moment in time, whereas identity is always shifting and is mercurial… and even biographies are mercurial.”
Those interested in visiting these “frozen moments” from Wisconsin’s history can reserve tickets at the Jewish Museum Milwaukee website. Lahav will be present at the museum for the exhibit’s opening on Thursday, March 5, and again in May for a day honoring Helen Bader.
* * *
New Wisconsin portraits
Pieces from “48 Jews” have been shown in New York City’s Jewish Museum, the Saginaw Art Museum in Michigan and Jewish Museum Miami. Portraits of the following Wisconsinites have been added to the 48 Jews collection for its upcoming visit to Jewish Museum Milwaukee:
Helen Daniels Bader. Social worker and philanthropist who advocated for Wisconsin’s elderly and underprivileged.
Lizzie Black Kander. Supported Wisconsin’s Jewish immigrant families as first president of The Settlement and author of “The Settlement Cookbook.”
Madame Goldye Steiner. Milwaukee native who was the first African American female cantor.
Gene Wilder. Famous actor and comic born in Wisconsin to a Jewish family.
Bob Dylan. Spent some of his formative years in Wisconsin prior to finding stardom as a singer songwriter in NYC.
Golda Meir. Grew up in Milwaukee before becoming prime minister of Israel 1969- 1974.
Loading ...
