Press contacts:
Anne Scher
or Alex
Wittenberg
212.423.3271
or
pressoffice@thejm.org
FOR
IMMEDIATE RELEASE
PANEL
DISCUSSION ON DESIGN AND MODERN LIFE
AT
THE JEWISH MUSEUM ON OCTOBER 22
NEW
YORK, NY - The Jewish Museum will present The Rite Stuff: Design and Modern
Observance, a panel discussion about the role
of design in modern life on Thursday,
October 22 at 6:30 pm. The panel
includes designer Jonathan Adler, artist Allan Wexler, writer and curator Ellen Lupton, and moderator Julie Lasky, editor of Change
Observer, who will consider how rites connected with birth, marriage, death,
and seasonal celebrations have changed in light of contemporary attitudes toward
community, family, and the environment.
Panelists will discuss how people are challenged to be both modern and
traditional, and what design’s role is in bringing ritual practices up to
date. This program is offered in
conjunction with the new exhibition, Reinventing Ritual: Contemporary Art and
Design for Jewish Life.
Panel discussion tickets are $15 for the general public; $12 for students
and seniors; and $10 for Jewish Museum members. For further information regarding programs at
The Jewish Museum, the public may call 212.423.3337. Tickets for programs at The Jewish
Museum can now be purchased online at the Museum’s Web site, www.thejewishmuseum.org.
Jonathan Adler
has been celebrated for the mod shapes, vibrant colors and organic eye-popping
patterns that are the signature of his work today. His business encompasses seven retail
outlets in New
York, Los Angeles, East Hampton,
Miami, San
Francisco and Chicago; a thriving interior design business; a
burgeoning licensing business expanding into bedding, bath accessories,
stationary, dinnerware and table linens at accessible prices; and original works
sold in high-end boutiques around the world. Jonathan Adler’s designs for the home
have appeared on the sets of The Today Show, Sex and the City, Will & Grace, and The Apprentice. He is the lead judge on Bravo’s reality
series, Top Design, which follows the
work and lives of professional designers.
Allan Wexler has worked in the fields of architecture, design and fine
arts for twenty-five years. He is
represented by the Ronald Feldman Gallery in New York and teaches at Parsons The New School
of Design. His designs have
resulted in objects, buildings and environments that blur the borderlines
between architecture and sculpture.
Wexler’s work has appeared in numerous national and international solo
shows. He received his undergraduate degree in architecture and
art from the Rhode Island School of Design and a Master of Architecture degree
from Pratt Institute, and was awarded the 2004/2005 Rome Prize Fellowship in
Design.
Ellen Lupton is director of the Graphic Design MFA program at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore, where she also serves as director of
the Center for Design Thinking. As curator of contemporary design at
Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum since 1992, she has produced numerous
exhibitions and books, including Mechanical Brides: Women and Machines from
Home to Office (1993), Mixing
Messages: Graphic Design and Contemporary Culture (1996), Letters from the Avant-Garde (1996), and
Skin: Surface, Substance + Design
(2002). Her books include
Thinking with Type (2004), D.I.Y.: Design It Yourself (2006),
D.I.Y. Kids (2007, co-authored with Julia Lupton), and Design Your
Life: The Pleasures and Perils of Everyday Things (2009, co-authored with
Julia Lupton). Lupton is a 2007
recipient of the AIGA Gold Medal, one of the highest
honors given to a graphic designer or design educator in the U.S.
Julie Lasky is the editor of Change Observer, a new Web site devoted
to design for social impact, supported by a grant from the Rockefeller
Foundation in association with the Winterhouse Foundation. Previously, she was
editor-in-chief of I.D.
Magazine, after positions as editor-in-chief at Interiors and managing editor at
Print. A widely published
writer and critic, she has contributed to The New York Times, Metropolis, Dwell, Architecture, Slate, Surface, The National Scholar, Graphis, Grid, Print, Eye and NPR, and she is the author of two books:
Borrowed Design: Use and Abuse of
Historical Form (written with Steven Heller in 1993) and Some People Can’t Surf: The Graphic Design of Art
Chantry (Chronicle Books, 2001).
Reinventing Ritual
marks artists’ and designers’ rising interest in ritual, and features new
objects and conceptual art ranging from repurposed seder plates to intricate
drawings, gold jewelry to imaginative videos and installations, concrete
mezuzahs to a model of an environmentalist synagogue building. This exhibition features nearly sixty
innovative works, created between 1999 and 2009 by leading artists in diverse
media. Outstanding examples of
installation art, video, drawing, sculpture, industrial design, architecture,
metalwork, textiles, jewelry, ceramics, and comics by a mix of emerging artists
and accomplished leaders in the field are on view. Among the 58 artists represented are
Jonathan Adler, Oreet Ashery, Helène Aylon, Deborah Grant, Sigalit Landau,
Virgil Marti, Mierle Laderman Ukeles, Karim Rashid, Galya Rosenfeld, Lella
Vignelli, and Allan Wexler.
Influences such as feminism, environmentalism, multiculturalism, and new
media have impacted the works in Reinventing Ritual.
An infrared assistive listening system for the hearing impaired is
available for programs in the Museum's S. H. and Helen R. Scheuer
Auditorium.
This event is the Saul and Gladys Gwirtzman Program, given annually in
memory of the parents of Rita J. Kaplan.
Public programs are supported, in part, by public funds from the New York
City Department of Cultural Affairs.
Major annual support is provided by public funds from the New York State
Council on the Arts, A State Agency.
The stage lighting system has been funded by the Office of Manhattan
Borough President Scott M. Stringer.
The audio-visual system has been funded by New York State Assembly Member
Jonathan M. Bing.
About The
Jewish Museum
Widely admired
for its exhibitions and educational programs that inspire people of all
backgrounds, The Jewish Museum is the preeminent institution exploring the
intersection of 4,000 years of art and Jewish culture. The Jewish Museum was
established on January 20, 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
Jewish Museum maintains an important collection of 26,000 objects – paintings,
sculpture, works on paper, photographs, archaeological artifacts, ceremonial
objects, and broadcast media.
General
Information (NOTE: NEW MUSEUM HOURS)
Museum hours are Saturday, Sunday, Monday, Tuesday and Thursday, 11am to
5:45pm; 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 Web site at http://www.thejewishmuseum.org or call
212.423.3200. The Jewish Museum is
located at 1109 Fifth
Avenue at 92nd Street, Manhattan.
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