Views off Jewishness In Museum Video Show

Publication TypeJournal Article
AuthorsRussell, John
SourceNew York Times (1988)
Keywordsbibliographic
Abstract

"This summer, the Jewish Museum has made its debut in the domain of video art. "Time and Memory: Video Art and Identity" is the general title of the show. Visitors to the museum will hear and see live canaries as a counterpoint to antiphonal readings from the diaries of Anne Frank and the confessions of a Chilean torturer. Schubert's early masterpiece "The Erl King" is sung and played fortissimo on tape while visitors are given the chance to summon at will a wide range of related images on the screen. This visitor had to miss Bart Friedman's "Harold's Bar Mitzvah" (1977), which has been giving great pleasure. (I also missed part of Beryl Korot's "Dachau 1974" (1975), which I had seen more than once when it first came out.) But Fred Riedel, the guest curator in charge of the show, rings any number of changes during its somewhat erratic course, and some of them have much to teach us.". Artists mentioned in the article include Barbara Rosenthal ["Women in the Camps" (1976-86) and "Leah Gluck: Victim of the Twins Experiments" (1986)], Bart Friedman, Beryl Korot, Fred Riedel, Pier Marton, Nam June Paik and Shigeko Kubota, Allen Ginsburg, Allan Kaprow, Pierre Restany, Juan Downey, Claude Lanzmann, Grahame Weinbren and Roberta Friedman.