Convenings
Past Learning Exchange Reports:
Seattle, May 3–5, 2002
Andrea Assaf
2002
Case Sessions: The Jewish Museum, Mirroring Evil
The Jewish Museum’s exhibition Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art, features transgressive artworks by young artists two and three generations removed from the events of WWII as a springboard for dialogue about complicity and complacency toward evil in today’s society. The artists whose works are on view have eschewed the deeply entrenched Holocaust imagery that focuses on the victim and instead use images of perpetrators—Nazis—to provoke viewers to consider the seduction of power as well as contemporary manifestations of evil in the form of bigotry, war, and genocide. The exhibition has been highly controversial since the pre-release of its catalogue and the show’s opening in March. Curators, Norman Kleeblatt, Joanna Lindenbaum, and Carole Zawatsky invite us to consider approaches taken to contextualize the show and foster dialogue. Discussion will focus on issues related to interpretation and mediation of the work, the impact of the media’s coverage on discourse and dialogue, and internal impacts on the museum.
Presenters: Norman Kleeblatt, Joanna Lindenbaum, & Carole Zawatsky
The session begins with a clip from Hebrew Lesson, a video produced for the exhibit by one of the artists. The video is a compilation of clips of Hitler's speeches which, as edited together by the artist, produce a loop of Hitler saying, "Hello, Jerusalem, I apologize," in Hebrew.
Carole gives everyone a moment to think about the clip, and asks the group to think about the artist's intent. She poses the following questions:
- What do you think the message is?
- Can anyone be posthumously forgiven? Can anyone posthumously apologize?
- What are the limits of forgiveness and apology?
- Can a future generation accept an apology? Who has the right to grant forgiveness?
Reactions: A discussion of Apology
Pat R: I'm stuck because I can't conceive of Hitler apologizing. I just can't imagine that happening...
Sue W: It’s an ironic manipulation to make it appear that he had. We know those words were never spoken. It raises interesting questions.
Jessica A: It's excruciatingly powerful . . . the idea of millions of people thinking about this in some shape or form . . . thinking about what happened and what was done and… Coming to closure… To see that sort of thing . . . apology as possibility for closure ... so powerful. To see that on the screen and know that it could never happen.
Valerie C: The words have been spoken . . . the syllables . . . the action. For the artist to sit through all the hours to find those syllables is astounding, an obsession, to find the light behind the madness . . . Action at the end of that; subversive, almost undermining what he actually said that; madness becomes ; looped, you never get back to string syllables to the apology; blown away by the action that overrides the utterances
Michael W: When you see Hitler in his environment [at these rallies, surrounding by people], it takes you beyond the individual. The apology has to come from a society rather than an individual. This is relevant to a lot of current issues, such as reparations. Clinton's individual apology, while important, has a different impact than a societal response would. Apologies have to come from a society and not from one individual.
Jay B: The intentional question of the art work – it raises beautiful, wonderful questions, but the language as metaphor leaves me outside, because I don't understand Hebrew. It makes me think of how often, as minority communities, our language is insular; it doesn't translate to the general community. We often speak a special language, and others can't understand our emotional reactions. I can't understand what the dynamics of an apology would be. As a gay person, I face the question, do we have civil rights in our relationships? People don't understand our situation. How do we help others understand our language?
Someone asks if there is a translation of Hitler's words in the material that accompanies the video, and she says there is.
Jessica A: It makes me think of the 'truth and reconciliation' process in South Africa. This process is actually going on, and one can't even believe that it's happening. It's something that so rarely happens, and yet it is happening in a contemporary context. I have to think of that when I consider whether it would be possible or not to see something like this happen. Who has the right to apologize and accept apologies? People in South Africa. It doesn't have anything to do with us. Those who have benefited from it must be involved. Bearing legacies for past actions . . . historical but contemporary.
Liz L: I experienced a host of contradictions in my reactions. I thought about the difference between a leader and a leader's people. As a contemporary Jew in a time when the Germans have apologized, what does this mean to me? Looking at Israel now, the people there, the leader and his actions, the actions of the people . . . I thought about what I forgive and why. The reasons for forgiving. What I feel when I'm with black friends who hoot when I am apologetic about the oppression of blacks in our society . . . It also seemed that the video began picking up pace, and it felt like history was speeding up…
Pat R: Looking at distinctions between apologizing and giving forgiveness, between reconciliation and forgiveness ...
Norman K: This was one of 4 videos the artist made. This one was the strongest. If we'd watched all of the videos, we would have gotten into other things . . . Most of the critics of the exhibition have focused on this work and have said that it was the only redeemable work in the exhibition. The museum staff all felt that it was over the top. Over time, we began to appreciate it. Through our discussions with survivors, educators, scholars, etc., we began to see how it affects people. One individual who supported us but felt ambivalent about the exhibit and the video asked the pivotal question: "But isn't this what everyone's been waiting for? The artist is giving us what we've been waiting for, even if we haven't asked for it, it's under the surface."
The Exhibition
Norman K gives some background information on the Museum, which focuses on WWII and the Weimar Republic, the period during which world history and Jewish history became inextricably linked and the world experienced one of the most heinous moments of history. One of every four exhibits has some connection to the Holocaust, and these representations of the Holocaust produce very emotional reactions among visitors. They also produce on on-going dialogue about what Holocaust art should be: Should it always be redemptive?
The exhibit includes 13 artists and 18 works, and text panels accompany each work. Joanna & Carole explain that they did a lot of work to contextualize the artwork in this exhibit. Text panels include quotes from scholars and community members. Questions are posed to the visitor at the outset of the exhibit and become the framework for the exhibit, such as: What are the limits of irreverence? When does the mundane become dangerous? Who can speak for the Holocaust? They are revisited in text panels and other means throughout the exhibit. They don't mean to answer the questions, but to raise them repeatedly, in different ways, for participants.
How much is enough/too much contextualization? Where is the middle ground/balance for that contextualization?
A video which opens the exhibit shows clips from numerous pop culture representations of Nazis. It shows that Nazi imagery has been circulated in pop culture for years; that the images in this exhibit are nothing new. Docents are also trained to answer questions about the exhibit. They provide 4 tours throughout the day and help visitors interpret the works. They wear buttons that say, "Ask Me."
Another video contains survivors and others addressing the camera directly, posing questions such as: Can you know what this [tattoo] means? Can you know what it is to be a Nazi? Why has the Nazi become the perfect symbol of evil? The video includes museum staff, artists, academics, survivors, and other community members talking about the exhibit. It focuses on what the art means and what they would like to say to the artist. The artists discuss their own intent. Each person comes to the exhibit with different expectations, and this is an opportunity to hear his or her own voice echoed back. It creates an opportunity for dialogue with artist. The exhibit ends with a response room, where staff are able to resurface questions and help visitors answer them.
Samples of the Art
In Zbigniew Libera’s LEGO Concentration Camp Set (1996), the artist photographed miniature concentration camps and other images of the Holocaust that he made from Legos, and then repackaged into sets of three, as if they were actual Lego sets for sale. Norman K. explains that the piece entered the collection in 1996. He felt that it was completely comprehensible and above reproach at that time, but it was also part of a wave of artwork that changed the way the Holocaust was being represented. He showed the piece to Museum staff and asked, "What do you see here?" to test his interpretation of the work. In general, the staff felt that it was an interesting work of art, but felt that it was ridiculous to buy it. But the piece worked on him. He took it to the acquisitions committee to get their take on it. Their reactions were all over the place. How can you even think about acquiring this? It's disrespectful, amazing, etc. One person said that you can see yourself being able to build structures that kill; that it reveals the simple basis from which you can build hatred. The Museum decided to buy it because it's an amazing educational tool that works for both children and adults. Norman explains that this was not the only work that moved away from redemptive artwork, that moved individuals into unsafe connections with that period of time, that moved from a focus on the victim to a focus on the perpetrator, from the witness to the participant. This body of work raised important questions about the younger generation's response to their connection with these events, about their mediated understandings of past events.
The Nazis(1988),by Piotr Uklanski, contains 164 film stills of famous artists who played Nazis. It raises questions about what happens when attractive men play villains. It also deals with the fact that many people learn about the Nazi era through the media, particularly in countries that were/are silent about that period. Younger generations continue to learn about it primarily through popular media. What do these mediated images tell us?
Enfants Gatés (Spoiled Children, 1997), by Alain Séchas, contains small sculptures of naïve Disney-like baby characters with elements of signifying evil (Hitler mustache, Nazi flags). Mirrors reflect the line of statues so that they appear to extend into infinity. The piece explores the role of repetition in Nazi culture (e.g., architecture) and ideas about socialization…
In digital artist Alan Schechner’s It’s the RealThing—Self-Portrait at Buchenwald (1993), a well-known photo of concentration camp inmates has been modified by superimposing a photo of the artist himself with a can of diet coke into the image. The photo reveals the artist's belief that there is no way that he can really relate to what the victims experienced. We purposefully consume food with no nutritional value, while they were starving in overcrowded, inhumane camps.
L’Homme Double (1997), by Christine Borland, contains sculptures of Joseph Mengele, an infamous Nazi doctor who was rumored to be unusually handsome. Multiple artists used victims' descriptions of Mengele to construct sculptures of the perpetrator. Different artists used the same descriptions and produced very different representations, exploring the relationship between attractiveness and evil, and revealing that there is no one way to represent evil. Etc.
Mat Collishaw’s Burnt Almonds series (2000) contains large, hologram-like views of Hitler's final days in the Berlin bunker. The artist used photographic transparencies to restage the final moments in the Berlin bunker in five erotic, repulsive images. The images explore our fascination with death, destruction, and the collapse of the powerful.
The Dialogue
The exhibit was conceived of as a project with 4 partners. Three public forums/dialogues facilitated by hosts were planned. They developed special plans for school groups because they didn't want the exhibit to become a way for teachers to use one field trip to teach the Holocaust. The exhibit is not intended as a history lesson; it does not teach the history of the Holocaust. They developed 3 seminars for teachers, who must attend them before bringing a class to see the exhibit. So far, 30 classes (grade 9 and higher) have seen the exhibit. A curriculum guide is also available.
Three public forums/dialogues facilitated by hosts were planned. Through ADI, the Museum was able to add daily dialogues between 4 and 5pm. Museum staff are there to listen to people's concerns and take people through conversations about the exhibit. They provide a set of rules for the dialogues.
Carole says that the level of participation in the dialogues varied from 25 people on a Sunday to 2 people during the week. They describe the interesting dynamics at these dialogues. In one session, a group of Catholic boys and Jewish girls participated in a lively dialogue. The boys were able to ask the girls about their experiences and responses to the exhibit, and the girls were able to do the same of the boys.
Carole hands out pads of paper and asked everyone to write questions and pass them up to her. Carole says that she would like the audience to respond, to discuss the questions with each other, instead of posing the questions to her, Norman, or Joanna. (This was one method used in some of the public dialogues.) Someone asks if she would read all of the questions so that we can pick the ones to discuss in the allotted time.
Questions from the ADI participants:
- How do you feel about maligning Lego, which was implicated in the exhibit but not actually associated with the Holocaust?
- Are all of the artists Jewish? Do you have to be Jewish to comment on the Holocaust?
- What was the curatorial basis of the exhibit?
- How did the staff experience the exhibit?
- Where do we go from here?
- How were works chosen?
- Are you concerned about how these works might be used by others in the future?
- Will this exhibit help or hinder the American Jewish community? Will it affect this community's relationship to victimhood?
- Why is there power in victimhood?
Barbara: Did the questions often go to the issues (as opposed to the curatorial choices)?
Carole: Yes. They tended to be more issue-oriented.
Joanna: The facilitators asked participants to focus a single work of art to focus them on an issue.
Victim / Perpetrator
Carole: Liz's questions about the works' effects on contemporary Jewish community's relationship to victimhood is something we would here in the dialogues. What happens to Jewish identity when it's repositioned into privileged society? We would likely start there and then bring us into the artist's intent and then into the response…
Norman: These issues came up in both the academic and community groups. What is the meaning of victimhood among empowered Jews? Many people's experiences differed from their parents' experiences. What is lost with that change? The sense of social responsibility that former generations had can sometimes be overshadowed by victimhood; Jews no longer feel a necessity to engage in social change the way they once did; by clinging to victimhood, one keeps creativity and change at a distance.
Selma: This exhibit deals with the taboo nature of concentrating on the perpetrators, of trying to understand the perpetrators. Can we push the envelope and make ourselves look at what we are perpetrating on different populations (e.g., Arab groups)? Where do we go from here?
Joanna: It poses questions about the relationship between Jewish and non-Jewish artists' artwork within and beyond the exhibit.
Valerie: What would happen if you'd done this with the situation in South Africa?
Norman: We ask ourselves, what would happen if we did this work in the Middle East? We are becoming vulnerable at a time when the U.S. and the Jewish community feel more vulnerable. (e.g., Sept. 11. impacts)
Seeing and Believing: Impact of the Press
Barbara: (Provides more background information about the initial public response to the exhibit) The catalog was early and released at a private opening in November, after which it was discussed at a dinner party. A Wall Street Journal journalist was present at the dinner party and wrote about the upcoming exhibit based on what he heard there. Some journalists found images on-line and from other sources and printed them in their articles; others wrote opinion pieces based on what they had heard about it. This press coverage provided a different, highly-charged context for seeing the exhibit.
Carole: It's interesting to compare the writings of those who’ve seen it with the writings of those who haven't ... The press dialogue did inform the dialogue that occurred in the museum. Those who provided written feedback on their Museum experience often referred to their initial reactions to the pre-exhibition press coverage.)
Norman: Professors have been bringing classes to see the exhibit as well. It's those who don't come in and only read about it that are of greatest concern…
Joanna: I'm going to hand out a packet that contains visitor responses; articles prior to the exhibition; letters written in reaction to the press; etc. They reveal the big disconnect between those who saw the exhibit and those who didn't.
Museum Space, Safe Space
Valerie C: Why is it so explosive here? If the images were available in many other contexts and haven't provoked such an outcry in other contexts, what makes them so provocative now?
Carole: We were surprised by the protest from Jewish groups.
Norman: When something moves into the walls of a museum, it is perceived very differently.
Selma H: A museum is not always a safe space for these types of dialogue. They tend to provoke giant controversies; danger is sparked off by museums. What is it that museums are, what are their roles, how do people perceive them? We need to think about our ideas of them as safe spaces versus sites of conflict.
Norman: Why did Broadway (in The Producers) get away with things that the Museum hasn't? We are held to a higher standard. If we do what the public asks of us (safe, charming places in which to have a good time), we would become the entertainment industry and no longer be a sacred space.
Julie: It brings up issues of control in dialogue. Should we be containing it in the museum or expecting the dialogue that bubbles up in the press and other sites outside of the museum and seeing that outside dialogue as an important part of the process?
Liz: I'm thinking about safe spaces, these institutional spaces that house our myths. One of the things that seems so scary is that even the Holocaust no longer gets to have an official/sacred myth. Everything has changed. There are major generational issues here. We need to look at how we define safe spaces. Safe spaces as places where we can have the argument. We need to reassess the sense of respect we feel toward the Holocaust and those who experienced it. We need to respect the past and know that we need to move forward.
Norman: It's about generations and nations; more about questioning. What is supposed to be meaningful for us in our reaction? This is dangerous territory. If we can do it without killing each other, even debate, then we may create some kind of change in attitude. My essay winds up talking about the disconnect between writing about the horrors of the holocaust, about our horror that people could witness such events, and our current capacity to witness other contemporary massacres.
Barbara: This all ties in to the tensions we feel between the personal and public. The Jewish Museum did surround itself with community members and became a place for discussion within Jewish leadership…
Norman K: We've received moving letters and calls from supportive Jews who are members of synagogues run by clergy who are vocally against exhibition. Some of these individuals were initially opposed to the exhibit but then distanced themselves from their clergy to speak out on behalf of the exhibit. These are very personal issues that have large effects within communities.
Valerie: It brings up issues about museums and what their original mandates are, especially if they are ethnically specific in their mandates. Contemporary artists play with that; the nature of contemporary art is to interrogate that language. In doing so, they sometimes produce art in which that language, or the alternatives produced by the artist, become unrecognizable. The language and ideas are inflected … It also raises questions about what would have happened if this work had been exhibited elsewhere. Would this exhibit have been received differently if it had occurred elsewhere, such as a contemporary art museum?
Norman K. discusses exhibits in contemporary art museums in England and Paris that provoked similar types of reactions.
Warhol Museum: Museums are moving into morally ambiguous spaces. We are putting ourselves out there and aligning ourselves with artistic practices rather than institutional practices. We are becoming forums and safe places for critical dialogue. It speaks to a hybridity of the space that they museum is moving into. The press deals with the issue and the art but doesn't dovetail them together. We are dealing with the challenges of art and mediation, of setting up frameworks. It leaves it all ambiguous.
Audience
Michael W: We always bring our own contextualizations with us when we enter an exhibit and relate to it based on those personal experiences. We think about how the works relate to other issues in our lives and societies. For example, this exhibit is relevant to the experiences of African Americans, which is a major dialogue in our society. It provides opportunities for the larger society to learn from this and take it as something rare to get somewhere, to go beyond where you are. It addresses issues typically not dealt with on a daily level. I asked the question about the impact on Lego. I'm thinking about the issues involved with Reparations here in the US. I'm thinking that it's the victors who write history and the control of images that you might not have access to. This has great potential for the larger community. Are other people coming to see this?
Carole: I've noticed that the audience is younger than at other exhibits and in our membership base. It also seems more diverse, although we don't have statistics on this. It looks completely different, more teenagers and young adults. (Early 20s. Lots of body piercing.)
Norman K: I believe that the anecdotes tell us more than all the analysis could. Someone told me that Jewish museums tend to be places for little children and grannies; this is for everyone in between.
Conceptual Art and Ambiguity
Is representation the same as reality?
Joanna: To what extent do we need to contextualize conceptual works of art in order to help people understand it?
Henry Art Gallery staff: I think that some of the negative reactions are due to fact that they are showing contemporary art, which tends to be more explosive, which is why I was curious about the curatorial decision-making.
Carole explains that the Jewish Museum often/always shows contemporary art.
Norman: I had seen "a flowering of art about the Holocaust" in a publication and realized that a shift had clearly occurred in the field ... I began an essay talking about an African American female artist whose work deals with antebellum south and exemplifies this shift away from the safety of art based on identity politics (that had clear good/bad signals; you know what your response should be). This art demands the audience to be a player. It deals with relational aesthetics; the work is made with the viewer as a participant. It works in morally ambiguous spaces. We can't teach morals; they must be learned in action that takes place in gray zones. These are morally insecure spaces that seriously implicate the viewer.
Henry Art Gallery: In these cases, viewers are likely to get critical, or to attack the art. That is to be expected.
Norman: Platitudes are more easy to take than contemporary art.
Comment: It's fascinating when artists shift paradigms and use metaphorical languages that require you to enter the art…
Norman K: It's not about 'art about art'; it's about art and society and politics. The nuances are often lost in the press, which presents everything as black and white. I don't like to do work on something that has an answer; I like to work with questions.
Jay B: I'm glad that this project is here. We [at Out North] have felt alone because we've taken that premise of being the intellectual center of the community and questioned it, explored it, used it. We do have an anti-intellectual tradition here in this country. So, we need to speak plainly; and these images do that. The Lego piece: what if Nazi Germany had won the war? Our children would be playing with something like that. We need to have artists who can ask those questions and pose those ideas in a way that people can see them to promote critical thinking.
