WORKS BY GUSTAV KLIMT, FLORINE STETTHEIMER, UMBERTO BOCCIONI, AUGUSTE RODIN, AND AUBREY BEARDSLEY INCLUDED

NEW YORK, NY - The Jewish Museum will present The Power of Conversation: Jewish Women and Their Salons from March 4 through July 10, 2005. From their debut in the 1780s to their emergence in 1930s California, Jewish women’s salons served as welcoming havens where people from different classes and creeds could openly debate art, music, literature, and politics. The Power of Conversation: Jewish Women and Their Salons examines the extraordinary history of these salons where ambitious women of intellect resolved that neither gender nor religion would impede their ability to bring about progressive social change and great art. Salon guests assembled to discuss ideas, exhibit their artwork, perform their music, recite literary works, and forge political alliances. The exhibition demonstrates the influence of the salon on the promotion of new art, music and literature, and on the creation of celebrity. It probes the role that private conversations in the drawing rooms of 14 influential Jewish women had in fostering the careers and fame of such celebrities as Felix Mendelssohn, Marcel Proust, Oscar Wilde, Gustav Klimt, Pablo Picasso, Marcel Duchamp, Greta Garbo, and others. Henriette Herz, the first Jewish woman to host a salon; Ada Leverson, who welcomed Oscar Wilde to her salon even after his controversial arrest; Anna Kuliscioff, an activist ardently opposed to the oppression of women; and Margherita Sarfatti, who acted as Mussolini’s political partner, are just a few of the engaging cast of characters to be introduced in the exhibition. A total of 197 objects will be on view including portraits of the salonières and their guests, as well as paintings, sculpture, drawings, prints, photographs, letters, manuscripts, musical scores, political treatises, plays, novels, poems, furniture, fashion, and film. Among the fine arts highlights in the exhibition are: eleven oil paintings by the New York-based American artist and salonière Florine Stettheimer; fifteen drawings by Wilhelm Hensel of Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (Felix’s sister and Wilhelm’s wife), Felix Mendelssohn, Clara Schumann, Henirich Heine, and others; as well as works by Gustav Klimt, Auguste Rodin, Umberto Boccioni, Achille Funi, Moritz Daniel Oppenheim, Max Beerbohm, and Aubrey Beardsley, among others.

Following its New York City showing, The Power of Conversation will travel to the McMullen Museum of Art at Boston College where it will be presented by Boston College and the New Center for Arts and Culture, Boston from August 22 through December 4, 2005.

The Power of Conversation focuses on 14 of the most powerful women who hosted these salons from the late 18th through the mid-20th century. Included are: the first Jewish salonières, Henriette Herz and Rahel Levin Varnhagen in 1780s Berlin; Fanny von Arnstein and her sister Cäcilie von Eskeles in Vienna; the famed music salons of Amalie Beer and Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel (the sister of Felix) in Berlin; the haute chic 1890s literary salons of Ada Leverson in London and Geneviève Straus in Paris; the subversive political salon of Anna Kuliscioff in Milan; the modernist art salons of Berta Szeps Zuckerkandl in Vienna and Margherita Sarfatti in Milan; the avant-garde gatherings of Gertrude Stein in Paris and Florine Stettheimer in New York; and the salon of Salka Viertel in 1930s Los Angeles. The exhibition reveals these salonières as exceptional women who became major players in the society, arts and politics of their times, despite their minority status, and examines the salon as a seat of power for women and a means of social ascent for traditional outsiders.

In the period salons flourished, neither Jews nor women had the same access to education and professions, or artistic and political influence that they have today. The Power of Conversation asks how these gatherings altered social conventions between sexes and classes, Jews and non-Jews. It looks at how creative and intellectual works by salon guests were shaped by the ideas exchanged therein. The show also considers how salonières used their gatherings as a means of professional self-promotion. Through a detailed documentation of the celebrities and geniuses who attended their salons (and wrote about them), of the works that hung on the walls or debuted in their homes, and of careers and relationships made and broken, The Power of Conversation demonstrates the uniquely public domain of the private salonière.

The exhibition begins with an image of Gertrude Stein, the best-known Jewish salonière. As an expatriate whose collection (begun with her brother, Leo) has been deemed the first museum of modern art, and as a lesbian and radical writer, Stein represents the influence exerted, and the boundaries crossed by Jewish salonières. From there, the exhibition briefly documents the origins of salons in 17th century France, and the establishment of a tradition both elite and egalitarian.

In the late 18th century, in the age of the Enlightenment, Berlin was the city in which Henriette Herz and Rahel Varnhagen hosted salons. The conversations at their salons were crucial for developing the ideals of tolerance and reasoned argument, and for nurturing the new Romantic movement.

The salons organized by Fanny Mendelssohn Hensel and Amalie Beer exemplify the salonière’s role in the promotion of music. Fanny was the sister of composer Felix Mendelssohn. A gifted pianist and composer in her own right, she made her salon the instrument of her talents, welcoming such guests as Niccolò Paganini and Clara Schumann, and premiering new works, including her own compositions. In her Berlin mansion, Amalie Beer orchestrated performances while she furthered the career of her son, Giacomo Meyerbeer, who went on to become one of the great composers of French grand opera.

By the later part of the 19th century, salons had become the scene of public dramas – personal and political. No one knew this better than the young Marcel Proust, an ambitious socialite who found his way into the most prestigious salons of Paris. The salonière who made the greatest impression on Proust was Geneviève Straus. Her elegant wit was immortalized in the dialogues of his novels.

Berta Zuckerkandl in Vienna, and Margherita Sarfatti in Milan represent the salonière as cultural impresario, artfully influencing and promoting their networks of guests and their works. A prominent cultural critic, Zuckerkandl spearheaded the Viennese Secession from within her drawing room. Sarfatti was an art critic, author, the lover of Benito Mussolini, and during the 1920s, the de facto head of Fascist policy in the fine arts. Sarfatti believed that matters of culture, fostered in the salon, could pervade the politics of the public sphere.

The apartment of the Stettheimer sisters was a rendezvous for Americans returning to Europe after World War I and members of the Parisian avant-garde in transit. The Stettheimer salon was one of the most sophisticated in New York between the world wars. Florine Stettheimer turned life into art, making the parties and guests the subject of her paintings, which then hung on the walls amid décor and furniture of her own design. Only after her death did Stettheimer receive a major one-person show: Marcel Duchamp and Henry McBride organized her retrospective at The Museum of Modern Art in 1946.

Salka Viertel’s salon in Los Angeles was an outpost first for European talents lured to Hollywood to work for the film studios, and then for refugees who fled the Nazis. It became a home away from home for many famous European émigrés. Her salon offered culture as a haven from totalitarian politics for many of the most famous names in Hollywood during and after World War II including Greta Garbo, Sergei Eisenstein, Bertolt Brecht, Thomas Mann, and Arnold Schoenberg.

By the mid-20th century, movies, television and radio had largely replaced the role salons had played in facilitating cultural exchange and dialogue. In addition, the need for salons by women and Jews disappeared with political and social emancipation.

The exhibition has been organized for The Jewish Museum by guest co-curators Emily D. Bilski and Emily Braun. Emily D. Bilski is an independent scholar and curator specializing in 19th and 20th century art and cultural history. Emily Braun is professor of art history at Hunter College and the Graduate Center at the City University of New York. Shira Brisman, curatorial assistant at The Jewish Museum, coordinated the project.

Conversation, literature and music play an integral part in the experience of the exhibition through a specially created audio guide/audio theater. Rather than listen to a conventional audio guide, visitors will hear conversations, memoirs, letters and performances of the hostesses and their salon guests as they move from gallery to gallery throughout the exhibition. Produced by The Jewish Museum in association with Antenna Audio, the audio theater will be available to exhibition visitors for free.

A catalogue entitled Jewish Women and Their Salons: The Power of Conversation is being published by The Jewish Museum, New York and Yale University Press. It has been written and edited by Emily D. Bilski and Emily Braun, and includes contributions by Leon Botstein, Shira Brisman, Barbara Hahn, and Lucia Re. The 280-page book contains 85 color and 98 black-and-white illustrations. It will sell for $50.00 (hardcover) at bookstores worldwide. A softcover edition will be available at the two exhibition venues for $34.95.

In conjunction with The Power of ConversationI/I> exhibition, The Jewish Museum is offering two programs. On March 23 at 8:00 pm, the Ensemble for the Romantic Century will present Fanny Mendelssohn: Out of Her Brother’s Shadow, a theatrical concert featuring the music of Fanny Mendelssohn. On March 31 at 6:30 pm, a distinguished panel of speakers, including exhibition co-curators Emily Bilski and Emily Braun, as well as Whitney Museum curator Elizabeth Sussman and Union College professor Brenda Wineapple, will consider the contributions of women such as Gertrude Stein, Margherita Sarfatti, and Florine Stettheimer to literature and the visual arts from the late 18th century through the 1930s.

This exhibition was made possible through leadership grants from the Andrea & Charles Bronfman Philanthropies and the Dorot Foundation, and from the Leo and Julia Forchheimer Foundation, The Lucius N. Littauer Foundation, Sara Lee Schupf and Tillie K. Lubin, and the Blanche & Irving Laurie Foundation.

Major support was also provided by Susan and Roger Hertog, The Donald and Barbara Zucker Foundation, The Richard J. and Joan G. Scheuer Family Foundation, The Nash Family Foundation, the New York Council for the Humanities, the Austrian Cultural Forum, Agnes Gund and Daniel Shapiro, The Abby and Mitch Leigh Foundation, Leni and Peter May, and other generous donors.

The catalogue was made possible by the Dorot Foundation publications endowment.


About The Jewish Museum

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 28,000 objects—paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, archeological artifacts, ceremonial objects, and broadcast media. Widely admired for its exhibitions and educational programs that inspire people of all backgrounds, The Jewish Museum is the preeminent United States institution exploring the intersection of 4,000 years of art and Jewish culture.

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