Thursday, September 1 – Saturday, October 8, 2016
Thursday, September 1st
Gallery talk with Archie Rand at 4:00 pm
and Leslie Golomb and Barbara Goldman at 6:00 pm
Opening Reception: 5:00 – 8:00 pm
Archie Rand: Sixty Paintings from the Bible
North Gallery
Sixty Paintings from the Bible features all sixty canvases from internationally celebrated artist Archie Rand’s groundbreaking series, not seen together in its entirety since a 1992 exhibition at New York’s Arthur Roger Gallery. Each loosely painted canvas in Sixty Paintings from the Bible portrays a familiar story from the Hebrew Bible or the Apocrypha, rendered in colorful tones and with an expressionistic comic book style that adds a fresh perspective to stories that have shaped human civilization. Indeed, Rand’s colloquial interpretations, both stylistically and his attribution of common vernacular to the biblical figures, combine to convey moments filled with drama as well as humor, in part functioning as a re-reading designed to make viewers think twice about familiar tales.
Archie Rand: The Book of Judith
Center Gallery
Comprised of fifteen paintings, this series investigates the apocryphal Book of Judith. The figure of Judith interested Rand as a paradoxical feminist hero and someone whom he wanted to immortalize in a way that would be visually memorable. Seizing on the recurring theme emphasized in the Book of Judith—the widow Judith’s cognizance of her extreme beauty, and use of her wiles and intoxicating charm to entice men to do her bidding, but in the service of her people—Rand decided on an unusual approach by which to image the heroine. He portrays Judith as a changing presentation of 1940s pin-ups, alluding to her ability to switch personalities and exploit her powers of attraction, which she employs knowingly and with precision.
To Speak Her Heart, by Leslie A. Golomb and Barbara Broff Goldman
South Gallery
This group of unique works on paper considers Jewish women’s devotional literature beginning with the biblical figure of Hannah and journeying throughout the land of Israel and the Jewish diaspora. Artists Leslie A. Golomb and Barbara Broff Goldman depict prayers and poems that represent a wide range of women’s voices and concerns written in the form of a request or plea. Other artistic explorations include the reclamation of iconography originally associated with Jewish tradition and later appropriated by Christianity.
Archie Rand: The Painted Shul
Media Room
A documentary titled Archie Rand: The Painted Shul (2007) chronicles the artist’s execution of a groundbreaking commission in the 1970s to paint 8,000 square feet of floor to ceiling murals on the walls of Congregation B’nai Yosef, an Orthodox Sephardic synagogue in Brooklyn.
Curated by Samantha Baskind, Professor of Art History and Editor of the Pennsylvania State University’s book series Dimyonot: Jews and the Cultural Imagination.