4.10.13 Museum  of Jewish Heritage | SUSAN BEILBY MAGEE + KALMAN ARON  with JEAN BLOCH ROSENSAFT  INTO THE LIGHT: The Healing Art of Kalman Aron  Conversation + Reception + Booksigning Having trouble viewing this e-mail? View it in your browser Free and Open to the Public with Advance Registration REGISTER NOW Wednesday, April 10, 2013 at 6:30pm Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York An intimate conversation with Artist + Holocaust Survivor KALMAN ARON and Author SUSAN BEILBY MAGEE moderated by JEAN BLOCH ROSENSAFT   Booksigning + Reception to Follow Honorary Co-Chairs Hon. Kirsten Gillibrand  Hon. Carolyn B. Maloney  Hon. Jerrold Nadler + Hon. Lynn Schenk Artist, Professor, Holocaust Scholar, Marc Dennis + Eva Fogelman, PhD Host Committee Rabbi Yehuda Sarna, Bronfman Center for Jewish Student Life at NYU  Hon. Debra Cooper + Joan Dean +  Toby Greenberger Hindy Kisch +  Harriet Mandel, The Global Roundtable  AKArt Advisory New York, NY: A six-year-old girl sits for her portrait by an unknown artist…. Fifty years later, he asks her to write his story. Author Susan Beilby Magee will discuss the renowned artist Kalman Aron’s emergence from the ashes of the Holocaust and his exploration of the nature of humankind, his own humanity and the mystery of life—on canvas. She will reveal how Aron resolved fundamental life issues: How does one respond to the extremes of human brutality? What happens to the rage, sorrow and despair? Does one chose to remember, forgive, and heal? Kalman Aron is one of the last living survivors of the Holocaust to make a career for himself as as a painter. Scholar and Curator Jean Bloch Rosensaft will moderate a discussion between Kalman Aron and Susan Beilby Magee, and will take questions from the audience. A book-signing and reception celebrating the publication Hard Press Editions & Posterity Press’ INTO THE LIGHT: The Healing Art of Kalman Aron will be held with Aron and Magee. The book relates the life of this émigré artist from his youth as an art prodigy in Latvia, through four years of darkness in Holocaust slave labor and concentration camps—where drawing portraits of guards for morsels of food would save him from starvation. After the war, he made his way to the Vienna Fine Arts Academy where he received his Masters in Fine Art. He then left Europe, finding sanctuary in California in 1949. Aron first found success in America by painting pastels of children, later becoming known for landscapes and studies of people in his unique style of “psychological realism.” His work soon caught the attention of Hollywood celebrities and connoisseurs alike, and commissions arrived from such notables as Ronald Reagan, Henry Miller and André Previn. Shown in museums and held in private collections in America, Israel and Europe, Kalman Aron was honored in 2010 with the hanging of his iconic Mother and Child in the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust. Aron resides in Los Angeles, California. Kalman Aron is one of the last career artists who is a living survivor of the Holocaust,  and his artwork represents a significant contribution to post-War American Emigré Art. At the age of 88, he continues to paint. "When I wake up in the morning, I can’t wait to eat my breakfast and then continue painting the abstracts on which I'm working…I have to do it," says Aron. Tracing themes of courage, art, transformation and Holocaust history, INTO THE LIGHT presents a visual record of one man’s journey from the darkness into the light. “This book is a universal story about healing,” says Magee. “Its lessons relate to all who have suffered—physically or psychologically, whether collectively or individually. I hope it may guide all who seek to put their suffering aside and reclaim their light.” To purchase the book, please visit KalmanAron.com. Free and Open to the Public with Advance Registration REGISTER NOW LOCATION Museum of Jewish Heritage Edmond J. Safra Plaza 36 Battery Place, New York, NY 10280 646.437.4202 Author Susan Beilby Magee’s career spans diverse realms of politics, economics and spirituality. A leader of the women’s movement and director of the Mayor’s Office of Women’s Rights in Seattle, she moved to Washington DC as a White House Fellow in 1976. Magee held policy and management positions in domestic finance and economic development in the US Treasury and Commerce Departments and later served as an international business consultant. Having earned a BA from Pomona College and MBA from the Wharton School, she has served on numerous boards of directors. Twenty-six years ago, she turned from business to matters of the heart, meditation and healing, becoming a certified hypnotherapist and meditation teacher. She is the founder of the Washington Circle of Master Healers and participates in healing programs at the Center for Prayer and Pilgrimage at the Washington National Cathedral. Susan Magee’s life-long friendship with Kalman Aron began when she sat for her portrait at age six. A half century later, the artist asked her to write his story, and she spent countless hours interviewing him, his family and friends and other Latvian survivors. Over the past nine years, she traveled his path across Europe from Riga, through seven slave labor and concentration camps in Latvia, Poland, Germany and then Czechoslovakia and finally to Vienna where he studied art before coming to Los Angeles. Jean Bloch Rosensaft is Assistant Vice President for Communications and Public Affairs at Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion, and Director of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion Museum in New York. As previous Assistant Director of Education at The Jewish Museum in New York, she curated the exhibitions Chagall and the Bible and Justice in Jerusalem Revisited: The Eichmann Trial. Prior to The Jewish Museum, she coordinated educational publications and school programs at The Museum of Modern Art in New York. Ms. Rosensaft is a Founder and Vice-President of the International Network of Children of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and a Regional Vice President of the American Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors and Their Descendants. She serves on the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum’s Collections and Acquisitions Committee and Second Generation Advisory Committee, and is a member of the Advisory Board of the Bergen-Belsen Memorial Museum in Germany, where her exhibition Rebirth After the Holocaust: The Bergen-Belsen Displaced Persons Camp, 1945-1950 is permanently installed. She is a Trustee of Park Avenue Synagogue and chairs its Gallery Committee. She serves on the Editorial Advisory Boards of Moment and Reform Judaism magazines. A Phi Beta Kappa graduate of Barnard College (1973), Ms. Rosensaft pursued graduate studies in art history at New York University’s Institute of Fine Arts. Ms. Rosensaft has written and lectured widely on the Holocaust, Jewish cultural history, and modern art, and is the author of Chagall and the Bible (Universe Books, 1987). ABOUT THE BOOK 11 x 10 inches, 224 pages, hard cover with dust jacket, 210 color plates, 30 black and white images ISBN: 978-1-55595-385-0 List Price $50 PRESS “Notable Book of the Year 2012” by MOMENT Magazine "Book of Note" by Jewish Book World Magazine “Many books tell the inspiring and amazing stories of Holocaust survivors who manage to resume their lives anew after experiencing unspeakable horrors. [This] large-format book transcends the genre, providing an unblinking account of the life of an artist who survived seven slave labor and concentration camps and went on to create fine art.” —Sandee Brawarsky, The Jewish Week “Having time to look at the images, and reading Magee’s assessment of how they fit into Aron’s psychological journey, is a far different experience than reading the memoirs of other Holocaust survivors or coffee table books on other artists. This book is uniquely insightful. It may even help readers to understand how every survivor’s life is a continuing internal battle pitting memory of the past against the reality of the present.” —Donald Harrison, San Diego Jewish World UPCOMING BOOK TOUR DATES 3.4.13    Herb Nathan Educators’ Conference on the Holocaust, Scottsdale                AZ 3.7.13    Tolerance Education Center, Rancho Mirage California 4.10.13  Museum of Jewish Heritage, New York NY 6.8.13    The Center for Living Peace, Irvine CA 6.28.13  Smith Center for Healing and the Arts, Washington DC See photos from past events at KalmanAron.com 1.28.13      Politics and Prose, Washington DC 12.4.12      Library of Congress, AMED Reading Room, Washington DC 10.21.12    Museum of Tolerance, A Simon Wiesenthal Center Museum, Los                   Angeles CA 10.13.12    Washington National Cathedral, Washington DC MEDIA CONTACTS Amy Kisch, AKArt, art advisory: amy@AKArt.com or 646.580.6626 Liz Riviere, Hard Press Editions: liz@hardpresseditions.com or 702.896.8958 Images: Top - Kalman Aron in the studio with the artist’s Portrait of Henry Miller, oil on canvas (photo: © Elisabeth Caren); Kalman Aron’s The Lost Children, oil on canvas; INTO THE LIGHT: The Healing Art of Kalman Aron, book cover; Susan Beilby Magee (photo: © Michael Kress); Jean Bloch Rosensaft  Bottom - Susan Beilby Magee (photo: © Michael Kress); INTO THE LIGHT: The Healing Art of Kalman Aron, book cover; Jean Bloch Rosensaft ### DOWNLOAD A PRINTABLE PDF OF THE ### FOLLOW US ON FACEBOOK www.hardpresseditions.com | liz@hardpresseditions.com 702.896.8958

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