Press release from Congregation B’Nai Israel

“Degenerate Art” — or artwork that Hitler saw as a menace to German culture — is once again in the headlines, as looted art troves are discovered in Europe and their provenance hotly debated.  What is the history behind the headlines?  Why were some of the great artists of our time – Chagall, Klee, Kandinsky – targeted and their artwork banned?

On Sunday, January 11, art historian Vivian Gordon will visit Congregation B’nai Israel (CBI) in Rumson to speak on these 20th century masters and their treatment in Nazi-era Germany. The subject of a recent show at the Neue Galerie in New York City, the story of “degenerate” art also has drawn attention from the recent discovery of a huge stash of modern work found in a Munich apartment, and from the film The Monuments Men.

A specialist in European art and a lecturer at the Metropolitan Museum of Art., Vivian Gordon gives private and group tours of the Museums’s permanent collection and special exhibitions. The 11 am presentation, for which advance registration is required by Thursday, January 8, is being co-sponsored by Congregation B’nai Israel, the Red Bank Chapter of Hadassah and CHHANGE.

In 1937 the Nazi party opened a large exhibition to ridicule and condemn modern and abstract art confiscated from German museums and collections.  Of the artists whose work was shown, only six were actually Jewish.  Others were accused mistakenly of being Jewish, or associating with Jewish dealers and collectors, or just acting and thinking like a Jew.  Hounded by the police and spurned by the public, most of the artists fled into hiding or exile. The Degenerate Art exhibit traveled around Germany, displaying works by modern masters and prominent German Expressionists.  Many of the works were later sold, lost, or presumed destroyed.

Bagels and coffee will be served at the January 11 event. Admission is free for members of CBI and Hadassah, with non-members welcome for an admission fee of $5. Go here to register in advance, and for further information about this special program or other programs at the synagogue,  contact CBI director Emilie Kovit-Meyer at Emilie.kovit-meyer@cbirumson.org, or (732)842-1800 x 203.