Freud, Kushner and Spiegelman to Headline WISH YOU WERE HERE at The Jewish Museum, Dec 2013

In December The Jewish Museum will launch a new program series, Wish You Were Here. The first offering is a discussion between Jens Hoffmann, The Jewish Museum's Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Public Programs, and Dr. Sigmund Freud, as presented by noted Freud scholar Michael S. Roth. Over the next two years, Hoffmann will interview the subjects of Andy Warhol's Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century (1980), interpreted by prominent experts, as if each were coming to the Museum to have a conversation in the present day.

Continuing The Jewish Museum's expanded slate of lectures, conversations and events, the December program schedule also includes comics artist Art Spiegelman in conversation with playwright Tony Kushner, and Curatorial Assistant Emily Casden leading a walkthrough of Art Spiegelman's Co-Mix: A Retrospective.

Further program and ticket information is available at TheJewishMuseum.org/calendar or by calling 212.423.3200.

PROGRAM SCHEDULE - DECEMBER 2013:

Dialogue and Discourse: Art Spiegelman and Tony Kushner in Conversation

SOLD OUT

Thursday, December 5, 7:00pm

Two Pulitzer Prize winners, comics artist and author Art Spiegelman and playwright Tony Kushner, discuss issues of authorship and identity through the lens of Art Spiegelman's Co-Mix: A Retrospective. This program is offered as part of Dialogue and Discourse, a series of evening conversations inspired by current exhibitions, exploring artistic practice, global perspectives, and cultural issues.

Art Spiegelman was the first comics artist to win the Pulitzer Prize, which he received for the groundbreaking bestseller Maus. He co-edited Raw, and his comics have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, Playboy, and Harper's. Tony Kushner is best known for his two-part Pulitzer Prize-winning epic, Angels In America: A Gay Fantasia on National Themes. He wrote the screenplay for Steven Spielberg's Lincoln, which was nominated for an Academy Award.

Tickets: (SOLD OUT) $15 adults; $12 students/seniors; $10 Jewish Museum members

This is How We Do It: Art Spiegelman's Co-Mix: A Retrospective

Tuesday, December 10, 11:30am

Curatorial Assistant Emily Casden discusses the process of developing and organizing Art Spiegelman's Co-Mix: A Retrospective. This talk will take place in the café followed by a brief exhibition walkthrough.

The Jewish Museum is presenting Art Spiegelman's Co-Mix: A Retrospective, celebrating the career of one of the most influential living comics artists and showing the full range of five decades of relentless experimentation. Art Spiegelman (b. 1948) has produced a diverse body of work that has blurred the boundaries between "high" and "low" art. This first U.S. retrospective spans Spiegelman's career: from his early days in underground comix to the thirteen-year genesis of Maus, to more recent work including provocative covers for The New Yorker, and artistic collaborations in new and unexpected media. The exhibition includes over three hundred preparatory sketches, preliminary and final drawings, as well as prints and other ephemeral and documentary material.

Free with Museum Admission

Wish You Were Here: Sigmund Freud

Thursday, December 12, 6:30pm

Jens Hoffmann, Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Public Programs, will interview Dr. Sigmund Freud, as represented by Michael S. Roth, President of Wesleyan University. The evening will offer an interactive component to integrate questions and comments from Twitter and other social media platforms received in advance of each talk. Upcoming events will focus on Franz Kafka and Albert Einstein.

Highly regarded curator Jens Hoffmann joined The Jewish Museum in a newly created position as Deputy Director, Exhibitions and Public Programs in November 2012. Hoffmann is conceptualizing ideas and strategies for exhibitions, acquisitions, publications, research, and public programs, drawing on his global perspective and deep knowledge of contemporary art and visual culture. Formerly Director of the Wattis Institute for Contemporary Art in San Francisco from 2007 to 2012 and Director of Exhibitions and Chief Curator at the Institute of Contemporary Art in London between 2003 and 2007, Hoffmann has organized more than 40 shows internationally since the late 1990s. Hoffmann is known for applying a multi-disciplinary approach to his curatorial practice.

Michael S. Roth is author of six books including Memory, Trauma, and History: Essays on Living with the Past (2011) The Ironist's Cage: Trauma, Memory, and the Construction of History (1995), and Knowing and History: Appropriations of Hegel in Twentieth-Century France (1998). He has also edited several books of intellectual and cultural history, and was curator of the exhibition Sigmund Freud: Conflict and Culture, which opened at the Library of Congress and was on view at The Jewish Museum in 1999.

Tickets: Free with Pay-What-You-Wish-Admission - RSVP Recommended

Public Programs at The Jewish Museum are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs. Major annual support is provided by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of Governor Andrew Cuomo and the New York State Legislature. The stage lighting system has been funded by the Office of Manhattan Borough President Scott M. Stringer.

About The Jewish Museum: Widely admired for its exhibitions and collections that inspire people of all backgrounds, The Jewish Museum is one of the world's preeminent institutions devoted to exploring art and Jewish culture from ancient to contemporary. Located at Fifth Avenue and 92nd Street, The Jewish Museum organizes a diverse schedule of internationally acclaimed and award-winning temporary exhibitions as well as dynamic and engaging programs for families, adults, and school groups. The Museum was established in 1904, when Judge Mayer Sulzberger donated 26 ceremonial art objects to The Jewish Theological Seminary of America as the core of a museum collection. Today, the Museum maintains a collection of 25,000 objects - paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, archaeological artifacts, ritual objects, and broadcast media.

The Jewish Museum is located at 1109 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street, New York City. Museum hours are Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, 11am to 5:45pm; Thursday, 11am to 8pm; and Friday, 11am to 4pm. Jewish Museum admission is $15.00 for adults, $12.00 for senior citizens, $7.50 for students, free for visitors 18 and under and Jewish Museum members. Admission is Pay What You Wish on Thursdays from 5pm to 8pm and free on Saturdays. For information on The Jewish Museum, the public may call 212.423.3200 or visit the website at TheJewishMuseum.org.

Images: Left: Jens Hoffmann. Photo by Robert Adler. Center: Andy Warhol, Sigmund Freud, from Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century, 1980, screenprint on paper. The Jewish Museum, New York, Gift of Lorraine and Martin Beitler, 2006-64.10 © 2013 The Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts / ARS, New York / Courtesy Ronald Feldman Fine Arts, New York / www.feldmangallery.com. Right: Michael S. Roth.