Performance and Jewish studies scholar Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett joins us for a lively and informative conversation about her work as the Ronald S. Lauder Chief Curator of the Core Exhibition at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. As part of this work, she will be moderating "Meet the Family," an upcoming series of virtual conversations with the descendants of distinguished Polish Jews, which accompanies the museum's new Legacy Gallery. In conversation, we learn about what drew Barbara to her museum work and her work as a cultural anthropologist, ethnographer, and folklorist. And she shares the story of her collaboration with her father, "The Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust"--a unique blend of memoir, oral history, and artistic interpretation that is at once a labor of love, a tribute to a distinctive imagination, and a brilliant portrait of life in one Jewish hometown.

Episode 0288

February 4, 2021

Yiddish Book Center

Amherst, Massachusetts