Jewish Museum Presents POWER TO THE PORTRAIT FAMILY DAY, May 20

The Jewish Museum will present Power to the Portrait Family Day, a fun-filled multi-generational event celebrating the colorful worlds of artists Kehinde Wiley and Edouard Vuillard on Sunday, May 20 from 12 noon to 4 pm. Activities include two performances by Jukebox Radio, a huge drop-in art workshop, and self-guided family gallery hunts. The family day is inspired by The Jewish Museum's exhibitions, Kehinde Wiley/The World Stage: Israel and Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940. This event is free with Museum admission.

The May 20 program is for children ages 3 and up. Adults are asked to accompany their children. For further information regarding family programs at The Jewish Museum, the public may call 212.423.3200, or visit the Museum's website at www.TheJewishMuseum.org/specialfamilydays.

The Power to the Portrait Family Day is made possible by New York City Council Member Daniel R. Garodnick and funded under contract with the New York City Department of Youth and Community Development.

POWER TO THE PORTRAIT FAMILY DAY EVENTS

12:30 pm and 2:30 pm
PERFORMANCE: JUKEBOX RADIO
Families can dance and sing with Jukebox Radio in their performance mixing music, puppets, and more into an imaginative show for all ages. This unique band fuses musical genres such as pop, folk, rocksteady, and jazz, and will use projections and shadow puppets to highlight the portraits of Kehinde Wiley and Edouard Vuillard.

Jukebox Radio is a vibrant group of young performers brought together by educators Mark Dzula and Ardina Greco. The band features Joe Ancowitz (trumpet), Geoff Countryman (bari sax), Eric Farber (drums), Kyle Forester (bass), David Steinberg (tenor sax), and Ian Wolff (guitar). Jukebox Radio has performed at the Knitting Factory, Galapagos Art Space, the DUMBO Art Festival, and other events and venues throughout the United States.

12:00 noon to 4:00 pm
DROP-IN ART WORKSHOP
Families will create portraits using poses and pattern-making, taking inspiration from paintings by Kehinde Wiley and Edouard Vuillard. Children can draw themselves or family members in striking poses and then form collages with colorfully patterned paper.

The workshop also includes stations where children can make stamps depicting something unique about themselves, and papercuts inspired by the Jewish ceremonial art found in the backgrounds of Kehinde Wiley's paintings.

All day
SELF-GUIDED FAMILY EXHIBITION TOURS
Specialized printed family gallery hunts for Kehinde Wiley/The World Stage: Israel and Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940 will be available.

The art of Edouard Vuillard (1868-1940) - a painter who began his career as a member of the Nabi group of avant-garde artists in Paris in the 1890s - is being celebrated at The Jewish Museum in the first major one-person, New York exhibition of the French artist's work in over twenty years from May 4 to September 23, 2012. Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940 includes more than 50 paintings as well as a selection of prints, photographs and documents exploring the crucial role played by the patrons, dealers and muses who comprised Vuillard's circle. The exhibition examines the prominence of key players in the cultural milieu of modern Paris, many of them Jewish, and their influence on Vuillard's professional and private life. Vuillard's continuing significance from the turn of the 20th century to the onset of World War II is also being explored. Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940 brings together works from public and private collections in the U.S. and Europe. A quarter of the paintings have never been exhibited publicly in America before. Edouard Vuillard: A Painter and His Muses, 1890-1940 traces the entire arc of Vuillard's career, in which he pursued painterly experimentation in color, media, and ambience, especially in portraiture. Vuillard's late portraits are a revelation - among the great examples in the twentieth century and of dazzling virtuosity. Experimental, yet deeply committed to the old masters throughout his life, Vuillard maintained a continual tension in his work between tradition and modernism.

Kehinde Wiley/The World Stage: Israel features 14 large-scale paintings from the contemporary American painter Kehinde Wiley's newest series, The World Stage: Israel. The vibrant portraits of Israeli youths from diverse ethnic and religious affiliations are each embedded in a unique background influenced by Jewish ceremonial art. Also included are 11 works - papercuts and large textiles - chosen by the artist from The Jewish Museum's collection. All of the 14 paintings on view are being displayed in New York for the first time. A new acquisition by Wiley (born 1977, Los Angeles) served as impetus for the exhibition. The painting, Alios Itzhak (2011), is a nine-foot tall portrait of a young Jewish Ethiopian-Israeli man surrounded by an intricate decorative background inspired by a traditional Jewish papercut in the Museum's collection. Wiley says his appropriated decorative backgrounds serve as catalysts for his paintings. The paintings represent a unique fusion of contemporary culture with European traditions and those of North Africa and the Middle East. Roughly two-thirds of the portraits in the Israel series are of Ethiopian Jews, others are of native-born Jews and Arab Israelis. The artist is driven by an ongoing exploration of globalization, diasporas, cultural hybridity, and power. Saying he knows what it feels like to exist on the periphery, Wiley likes to catapult often powerless, anonymous young men of color onto enormous canvases and into the visual language of the powerful. The large size of the paintings reflects Wiley's observation that scale has been used as a measure of historical importance throughout art history.

The Edgar M. Bronfman Center for Education's school and family programs are supported by endowed funds established by the Bronfman Family, the Muriel and William Rand Fund, the William Randolph Hearst Foundation, the Helena Rubinstein Foundation, Rosalie Klein Adolf, the Kekst Family, and Mrs. Ida C. Schwartz in memory of Mr. Bernard S. Schwartz. We thank the following for their generosity: the Kekst Family, Capital One, MetLife Foundation, J.E. and Z.B. Butler Foundation, JPMorgan Chase, May and Samuel Rudin Family Foundation, Inc., Alpern Family Foundation, The Pumpkin Foundation at the request of Joseph H. and Carol F. Reich, Newman's Own Foundation, Epstein Teicher Philanthropies, Rose M. Badgeley Residuary Charitable Trust, Milton and Sally Avery Arts Foundation, The Jewish Museum Volunteer Organization, and other donors. We gratefully acknowledge public support from: New York State Council on the Arts, New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, New York City Department of Youth and Community Development, New York City Council Speaker Christine C. Quinn, Council Member Daniel R. Garodnick, Council Member Brad Lander, Council Member Mark Weprin, and other City Council Members.

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 the intersection of art and Jewish culture from ancient to modern times. 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, a collection of 26,000 objects is maintained - paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, archaeological artifacts, ceremonial objects, and broadcast media. The collection is among the three largest of its kind in the world and is distinguished by its breadth and quality. It is showcased in the vibrant, two-floor permanent exhibition, Culture and Continuity: The Jewish Journey, examining the Jewish experience as it has evolved from antiquity to the present.

Museum hours are Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday, 11am to 5:45pm; Thursday, 11am to 8pm; and Friday, 11am to 4pm. Museum admission is $12.00 for adults, $10.00 for senior citizens, $7.50 for students, free for children under 12 and Jewish Museum members. Admission is free on Saturdays. For general information on The Jewish Museum, the public may visit the Museum's website at http://www.thejewishmuseum.org or call 212.423.3200. The Jewish Museum is located at 1109 Fifth Avenue at 92nd Street, Manhattan.