New Exhibition Series from Broadcast Media Collection Launches in September at Jewish Museum

With a new, ongoing exhibition series called The Television Project, the Jewish Museum will introduce visitors to a dynamic part of its collection: the National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting (NJAB), the largest and most comprehensive body of broadcast materials on 20th century Jewish culture in the United States. The inaugural exhibition, The Television Project: Picturing a People, on view at the Jewish Museum from September 25, 2015 through February 14, 2016, will feature artistically significant program excerpts celebrating the brilliance of writing, directing, performance, and production in American television, as well as related works of art, artifacts, and ephemera. Picturing a People will include clips from the following programs: The Ed Sullivan Show, Northern Exposure, The Twilight Zone, The Goldbergs, The Simpsons, My Name is Barbra, and Eichmann Trial Coverage (ABC News).

Six thematic exhibitions will be presented from 2015 to 2018. Each exhibition will feature a compilation video by curator Maurice Berger. Since the mid-1990s, Berger has produced cinematic "culture stories," syncopated compilations of historic clips from American film and television that explore issues of identity and self-representation. His compilation, Threshold, was featured in the 2012 Whitney Biennial. For The Television Project, Berger will assemble clips from the NJAB, examining issues of Jewish identity and culture as depicted on American television.

Future exhibitions in the series will examine anti-Semitism, Jews and comedy, Jews and the advertising revolution, and depictions of Jewish masculinity and femininity, each through the lens of American television.

Upcoming Exhibitions - The Television Project

The Television Project: Some of My Best Friends

March 18 - August 14, 2016

Some of My Best Friends will explore the full range of the medium's approach to the issue of anti-Semitism, from the satire and humor of the situation comedy to serious dramas that dissect the origins, motivations, and consequences of prejudice. Art, artifacts, and clips from the following programs will be included: All in the Family, Downton Abbey, Gunsmoke, LA Law, Little House on the Prairie, Lou Grant, Mad Men, The Mary Tyler Moore Show, and Skokie.

The Television Project: Jews and the Advertising Revolution

September 16, 2016- February 12, 2017

Jews and the Advertising Revolution - which will include print advertising campaigns, ephemera, and a compilation video of television commercials from the Museum's NJAB - will explore commercials produced for Jewish audiences, with Jewish content, or by prominent Jewish writers, designers, and artists, examining the way religion, ethnicity, and identity were played out on American television, as well as the interface between identity and concepts of modern advertising campaigns from the 1950s to the 1970s. Clips from the following campaigns will be included: Alka-Seltzer, American Express, Hebrew National, IBM, Israel Tourist Board, Levy's Rye, NYNEX, Sara Lee, Manischewitz Wine, and the United Jewish Appeal.

The Television Project: Jews and Comedy

Opening March 17, 2017

From situation comedies to weekly variety programs, Jewish American comedians and comic actors have had an important place on television. This exhibition will examine the place of these performers in American culture as well as the concept of "Jewish humor" from the birth of TV in the 1940s to the present. Make Them Laugh will include art, artifacts, and clips from the following performers, writers, and directors: Woody Allen, Elayne Boosler, James L. Brooks, Mel Brooks, Jack Carter, Myron Cohen, Fran Dresher, Totie Fields, Robert Klein, Jackie Mason, Marilyn Michaels, Gilda Radner, Carl Reiner, Joan Rivers, Andy Samberg, Adam Sandler, and Nancy Walker.

The Television Project: Jewish Men on American Television

The Television Project: Jewish Women on American Television

Opening September 2017 and March 2018

Juxtaposing art, artifacts, and clips from a range of television dramas, variety, and comedy programs, this two-part exhibition examines depictions of Jewish masculinity and femininity from the 1950s to the present, from idealization and stereotype to complex and nuanced portrayals. Clips will be included from Bridget Loves Bernie, Glee, The Goldbergs, The Good Wife, Gunsmoke, Joan Rivers and Friends Salute Heidi Abromowitz, The Nanny, Northern Exposure, Rhoda, Saturday Night Live, Sex and the City, and Texaco Star Theater.

With more than 4,000 holdings, the National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting at the Jewish Museum was established in 1981 to collect, preserve, and exhibit television and radio programs related to the Jewish experience. The programs in the NJAB constitute an important record of how Jews have been portrayed and portray themselves from the 1930s to the present, and how mass media has addressed issues of diversity, ethnicity, and religion.

Maurice Berger is Research Professor and Chief Curator at the Center for Art, Design and Visual Culture, University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and Consulting Curator/Curator of the National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting at the Jewish Museum in New York. His critically acclaimed exhibitions have appeared at the Whitney Museum of American Art, Smithsonian National Museum of American History, The New Museum, Studio Museum in Harlem, International Center of Photography, Addison Gallery of American Art, Berkeley Art Museum, the National Civil Rights Museum, and other national and international venues. Most recently, he curated Revolution of the Eye: Modern Art and the Birth of American Television, which premiered at the Jewish Museum (May 1, 2015 - September 27, 2015) and will travel to four additional U.S. venues. He is the author of twelve books, including For All the World to See: Visual Culture and the Struggle for Civil Rights (Yale, 2010), Masterworks of The Jewish Museum (Yale, 2004), and White Lies: Race and the Myths of Whiteness (Farrar, Straus & Giroux, 1999). His honors and awards include a 2011 Emmy Award nomination from the National Academy of Television Arts & Sciences, New York chapter, and curatorial awards from the Association of Art Museum Curators and the International Association of Art Critics. Berger's essay series, Race Stories, "a continuing exploration of the relationship of race to photographic portrayals of race," appears monthly on the Lens blog of The New York Times.

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