Upcoming Special Exhibits
Exhibits at Jewish Museum Milwaukee explore the breadth of the Jewish experience and offer visitors to connect with history, culture and the arts.
Chagall’s Le Cirque
June 14 – September 8, 2019
Opening Preview: Thursday, June 13, 7:00 pm
Marc Chagall is considered one of Europe’s most accomplished 20th-century artists, a master of many mediums whose work reaches every corner of the world. The Le Cirque portfolio showcase Chagall’s quintessential use of vivid color, dreamlike composition, whimsical characters and magnetic draw to the circus, which he felt was symbolic of the human condition.
These beautiful prints will be accompanied by an exhibition that explores Wisconsin’s grand circus history and celebrates the tradition that was Milwaukee’s Great Circus Parade.
Chagall’s Le Cirque is organized by the Rahr-West Art Museum, City of Manitowoc, Wisconsin. Images courtesy of Rahr-West Art Museum; © 2019 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York / ADAGP, Paris.
The Girl in the Diary: Searching for Rywka from the Łódź Ghetto
January 24 – May 17, 2020
Opening Preview: Thursday, January 23, 7:00 pm
In 1945 a Soviet doctor found a school notebook in the liberated Auschwitz-Birkenau Camp. It was a diary written by the teenager Rywka Lipszyc in the Łódź Ghetto between October 1943 and April 1944 — the testament of a Jewish girl who lost her siblings and parents, but never lost hope despite moments of doubt. More than 60 years after its discovery, the diary traveled to the United States to the Holocaust Center of Northern California where Dr. Anita Friedman began the task of trying to locate answers about the notebook and its writer. An international research team was established – all them looking for answers and for Rywka Lipszyc.
Rywka’s diary, a moving memoir of life and adolescence in the Łódź Ghetto, is the starting point for this exhibition. Selected passages are supplemented by expert commentary from historians, doctors, psychologists and rabbis. These commentaries help us to understand the context of the times and events Rywka refers to in her diary. The historical and intimate artifacts displayed in the exhibit, including beads, thimbles, and toys, serve as witness to the personal dimensions of the Holocaust.