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Upcoming Events at the American Jewish Museum:Falling InArtist Ally Reeves Falling In launches the AJM's new season, Love/Fences/Nests: Projects by Ally Reeves, Ben Schachter and Anna Divinsky. The artists will each participate consecutively in a three-month residency presenting multi-media installations that result from collaborations with community members. They will set up studios in the AJM gallery and complete their installations while working in the museum, which will be open to the public. The informal, experimental ambience of Love/Fences/Nests will intrigue audiences as the artists unsettle notions of how art is customarily displayed in museum spaces, while stretching the boundaries of traditional art. Although each project will be on view independently, the concepts of feeling at home in public and the intersection of public versus private spheres in everyday lives, weave the exhibits together. 
Ally Reeves, "Falling In"Reeves' Falling In is a synergistic happening between her and members of the community. During the first phase of the exhibition, participants will share with her their stories about falling in love. Reeves will then transform the narratives into illustrations and Flash animations as the basis for the exhibition. Interpreting participants' personal stories, Reeves will explore how cartoons and animation use both representational and abstract visual language and messages to narrate the human condition. Falling In is a synthesis of low-tech social engagement, new media techniques, performance and installation. Like Falling In, many of Reeves' projects explore the dissolution of boundaries between art and life. Bringing art to people in an outdoor setting, she bicycled through Pittsburgh's parks with the Look-See Tree, a human-powered mini-theater she constructed and attached to a bicycle that was part of the Robot 250 program offered in conjunction with Pittsburgh's 250th anniversary. Combining art with social action, she helped organize The One Mile Meal and The One Mile Garden, projects in collaboration with inner-city and rural communities exploring their relationship with ? and understanding of ? their local agricultural resources including food production, distribution and sustainability. Reeves is a recent graduate of the MFA program at Carnegie Mellon University, a CMU fellow at the STUDIO for Creative Inquiry and the founder of the Mobile Museum, a project funded by a Seed Award from the Sprout Fund. Back to top About the American Jewish Museum (AJM):
The American Jewish Museum (AJM) is the only museum of its kind in Western Pennsylvania and strives to present the best of contemporary art from throughout the country, exceptional traveling exhibitions from world-class museums, and progressive regional artists. The AJM contributes in a substantive way to contemporary Jewish identity formation, serves to transmit Jewish values and traditions, and strives to play a key role in the renaissance of Jewish life in North America. From this cultural framework, the AJM considers and presents many universal themes that address world history, diversity and humanitarian concerns. Though non-traditional in its format, the AJM is extraordinary in its orientation by allowing exhibitions to hold a central role in community life, both metaphorically and architecturally. The AJM's presentation of visual art and historical exhibitions draw many people from the general community, but the exhibitions also live in the heart of daily experiences for thousands of people who utilize the JCC's programs and facilities. The AJM is proud to be a permeable museum venue and is dedicated to presenting exhibitions that challenge and excite viewers. Through community outreach and inclusion, the AJM offers cultural experiences outside of traditional venues for all citizens of the Western Pennsylvania region, promoting tolerance, acceptance and multiculturalism. All AJM exhibitions and related programs are free and open to people of all backgrounds and faiths. Melissa Hiller, American Jewish Museum Director Back to top Current Exhibitions:"A Window to My World"A project of the Galilead Initiative
A photography exhibit of life in the north of Israel representing the work of 70 Israeli Arab & Jewish photographers
Exhibit Opening The GaliLead Initiative is a partnership of United Jewish Communities, The exhibit will be on display at the JCC until October 31, 2008. Exhibit Curator: Effy Umiel-fadida Back to top Recent Exhibitions:
The American Jewish Museum proudly presents: Resonance, Disintegration, Transport and ReintegrationApril 28 through August 1, 2008Paintings and prints by Pittsburgh artist Juliana Morris Hebrew letterforms provide the inspiration for Resonance, large, Lambda metallic C-prints in mandela-like formations. Disintegration, Transport and Reintegration, acrylic paintings on canvas incorporating Hebrew letters and inspired by a lengthy study of Kabbalah, will be exhibited in the Fine/Perlow Weis Gallery. As a contemporary visual artist, Morris explores the intensity of the mandala in conjunction with the calligraphic qualities of Hebrew letterforms seeking to focus the attention of viewers and establish a meditative experience. The exhibition is free and open to the public,
For more information, visit the artist's websites at: http://julianamorris.blogspot.com or http://www.julianamorris.com; or contact Melissa Hiller, American Jewish Museum Director, at mhiller@jccpgh.org. Funding for this exhibit is provided by the Anna L. Caplan and Irene V. Caplan Philanthropic Fund of the United Jewish Federation Foundation. The AJM is supported in part by grants from the Allegheny Regional Asset District, the Jewish Healthcare Foundation and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Media sponsorship is provided by WDUQ-FM. Making Hope Happen
February 18 • May 16, 2008When introduced into a social environment, visual art can produce effects greater than or equal to other forms of social communication. Left alone, cherished visual artifacts are no different than any other object. Works of art can have poignant and lasting social impact, but generate their meaning only when viewers start communicating with and about them. The exhibition Making Hope Happen uses the communicative potential of art to transmit a diversity of life issues faced by people throughout the Pittsburgh community. Eight regional artists were chosen for this cooperative project of the American Jewish Museum (AJM) and Jewish Family & Children's Service (JF&CS). The artists include Leslie Ansley, Matt Forrest, Leslie A. Golomb, Adam Grossi, Wendy Osher, Philip Rostek, David Stanger, and Dror Yaron. The artists have created works that interpret stories of individuals served by the JF&CS and the pieces range from site-specific wall drawings and kinetic fabric sculptures to paintings, prints, and photographs. Berger Gallery • Alex and Leona Robinson Building • 5738 Darlington Road Funding for Making Hope Happen is provided by grants from the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, Reed Smith LLP, Anna L. Caplan and Irene V. Caplan Endowment Fund of the United Jewish Federation Foundation, The Fine Foundation, Staunton Farm Foundation and Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic. Body Maps - The Bambanani Women of Capetown, South Africa
February 11 • April 18, 2008Body Maps are artworks created by a group of women, The Bambanani Womens Group, based in Cape Town, South Africa. The Bambanani Women were invited to tell their stories through a community outreach program initiated by the AIDS and Society Research Unit of the University of Cape Town (ASRU) and Médecins Sans Frontières. This program began to document the lives of this group of HIV+ women who were given access to drug therapies. With the help of Cape Town-based artist, Jane Soloman, the participants created Body Maps- life size images tracing the contours of their bodies that visualize the virus and articulate each individual history. Drawn on life-sized panels of butcher paper, "body maps" are made by tracing two bodies: one of the artist and one of a partner. The artist then goes about filling in the traced bodies with images, words, patterns, designs and scars. A type of art therapy, the maps are used in conjunction with group therapy, photography and writing in order to help each woman deal with her HIV-positive status. Body Maps clearly pull viewers into a direct dialogue with South Africa's epidemic AIDS problem. One is asked to identify with individual women on a highly personal, emotive basis. Ultimately, the images of hope and beauty are used as qualitative research tools as well as instruments for narrative therapy and treatment literacy programs. For the AJM, this exhibit is an extension of its mission and ongoing collaboration with the Jewish Healthcare Foundation, by using art to engage crucial universal issues. Art is therapeutic and necessary in our lives, and this exhibit really does exemplify that concept. The exhibition will be on view at both the AJM and the offices of the Jewish Healthcare Foundation. Funding for this exhibit is provided by the Anna L. Caplan and Irene V. Caplan Philanthropic Fund of the United Jewish Federation Foundation and the A.W. Mellon Educational and Charitable Trust Fund of The Pittsburgh Foundation. Additional funding is provided by the Falk Foundation. The AJM is supported in part by grants from the Allegheny Regional Asset District, the Jewish Healthcare Foundation and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Media sponsorship is provided by WDUQ-FM. Nazi Persecution of Homosexuals 1933 - 1945
November 18, 2007 - January 12, 2008 From 1933 to 1945, Nazi leaders waged a ruthless campaign against people deemed "enemies of the state." Hitler's regime, driven by a racist ideology, carried out the mass destruction of six million Jews in the Holocaust and implemented a murderous program of "race hygiene" to cleanse German society of "foreign-blooded" Roma (Gypsies), carriers of hereditary diseases, and "aberrant" social behaviors, including homosexuality. The Nazis did not seek to exterminate all German homosexuals but endeavored to change their "erroneous" sexual behavior through forced "re-education" or, failing that, isolate their "contagion" from society. To view the online exhibition developed by the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, please visit, http://www.ushmm.org/museum/exhibit/online/hsx/Of the Painted Image | Miriam Cabessa, Seth Cohen, Peter Rostovsky Of the Painted Image was developed with the hope that through the encounter with the exceptional work of leading contemporary painters, viewers can develop a greater and more expansive understanding of what it is to be a contemporary Jewish artist and what we envision when we say Jewish art. This inaugural exhibition included paintings by New York City based artists Miriam Cabessa, Seth Cohen and Peter Rostovsky. To learn more about the artists please take a moment to visit their websites: 
Seasons | The Fabric Art of Tina Rieger June 4 • June 29, 2007 This memorial exhibition will display over 20 works by fabric artist Tina Rieger, including two chuppahs (wedding canopies) made for her children's wedding, a technicolored Joseph's coat and many other beautiful fabric pieces that celebrate a diversity of Jewish themes. 
The Forgotten Photographs: The Work of Paul Goldman 1943-1961 The Forgotten Photographs: The Work of Paul Goldman from 1943-1961, from the collection of Spencer M. Partrich, displays over 100 historic images documenting Eretz-Israel during the final years of the British Mandate and Israel's struggle for survival during its first thirteen years. Goldman's privileged access, first as a British Army member and later as a journalist befriended by Israeli leaders, offers a front row perspective of personal moments at a time of sweeping, historic change. 
The exhibition included 30 photographs and accompanying text interviews which provided viewers with poignant portraits of individuals that have been affected by or have perpetrated acts of genocide, specifically engaging the experiences and histories of Bosnia, Darfur, and Rwanda. Please stay connected with local efforts by visiting the Pittsburgh Darfur Emergency Coalition's web site - www.pittsburghdarfur.org. 
Body: In Diaspora was a community art project that brought together Somali and Jewish refugees for dialogue on their emigration experiences and their process of assimilation in a new society. The archives of their conversations along with biographies of the participants through video and prints are components for this new installation work by artist Maritza Mosquera. The American Jewish Museum supported this project and exhibition. 
The exhibition included over 20 exceptional paintings by acclaimed New York artist Joan Linder, providing viewers with touching depictions of the events and memories held within the walls of her grandparent's apartment at 118-60 Metropolitan Avenue in Queens, New York. 118-60 Metropolitan Avenue | Paintings by Joan Linder was presented in its entirety for the first time at the American Jewish Museum and we are proud to have mounted such a comprehensive exhibition of this important work. Back to top AJM Publications:
art works | Fall 2007
art works | Fall 2006 Click the link to the left to view a PDF file of the AJM's annual publication The following publications of the American Jewish Museum are available for purchase. 
To order please call 412-521-8011, ext. 105. Back to top Press:The Forgotten Photographs: The Work of Paul Goldman, 1943-1961 If My Eyes Speak | Photographs by Adam Nadel
Body: In Diaspora | New Work by Maritza Mosquera 118-60 Metropolitan Avenue | Paintings by Joan Linder Back to top The American Jewish Museum, now in its eighth year, relies on a variety of funding sources for its activities, including the support of individuals like you. Almost 30% of our annual budget comes from individual contributions. Please know that your support of the AJM will go directly toward exceptional exhibitions and programs that explore Jewish heritage and culture, positively impacting members of the Jewish community as well as other citizens of Western Pennsylvania. Your donation guarantees you an invitation to all exhibits and programs, "Meet the Artist" receptions and exhibit previews, as well as the Art Works newsletter and acknowledgement on the gallery Donor Plaque. Back to top Stay Informed - Sign up to receive AJM announcements:To sign up for our mailing lists please send an email to mhiller@jccpgh.org with "subscribe" and your proper name in the subject line. If you would also like to receive postcards and other print publications by post, please include your current mailing address. Your information is confidential and will not be shared with any other parties. You may quit this service at any time by sending an email with "unsubscribe" and your proper name in the subject line. Back to topContact Information:For more information about exhibitions and related programming at the American Jewish Museum, Melissa Hiller, American Jewish Museum Director
Back to top Partners:
General support for the American Jewish Museum is provided by the Allegheny Regional Asset District, the Anna L. Caplan & Irene V. Caplan Philanthropic Fund of the United Jewish Federation Foundation, the Jewish Healthcare Foundation and the Pennsylvania Council on the Arts. Media sponsorship is provided by WDUQ 90.5 FM.
Jewish Community Center of Greater Pittsburgh
5738 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh PA 15217 The JCC is open to everyone regardless of race, religion, national origin or special need. Copyright 2006 | ||||||||||||
