The art world isn’t a terribly comfortable place for Jewish artists right now.

 

Even before October 7, being Jewish was becoming increasingly less fashionable; now, after Hamas terrorists invaded, raped, tortured, and murdered 1,200 people inside Israel, often the feeling in the art world is that they had it coming.

 

Even before October 7, Nancy Pantirer of Short Hills, a painter and the founder of the 81 Leonard Gallery in lower Manhattan, had been thinking about a show about antisemitism. “The art world has been very outspoken about their pro-Palestinian feelings,” she said; the recent acts of vandalism at the homes of the head of the Brooklyn Museum and two board members there, because they’re Jewish, is a dramatic display of that unnerving hostility.

 

“This is painful for Jewish artists. So we” — Ms. Pantirer and artist and curator Hannah Rothbard, who often heads shows at 81 Leonard — “wanted to do something. I’m Jewish. Hannah is Jewish. We didn’t know what to do — but after October 7, we knew we had to do something, and do it quickly. So we reached out to the Jewish Art Salon, and they reached out to their members, and we came up with this concept.”

 

The Jewish Art Salon is a New York City-based nonprofit with members around the world. According to its website, jewishartsalon.org, its “exhibitions, publications and collaborations with institutions have played a vital role in the development of the contemporary Jewish visual art and scholarship. The Jewish Art Salon’s engagement with the global Jewish art community promotes synthesis between leading thinkers and makers and seeks opportunities to advance new connections across the field.”

 

The show that Ms. Pantirer, Ms. Rothbard, and the salon came up with is called “Artists on Antisemitism”; it will be up until the end of August. (See below.)

 

The show is not political, or at least it is as apolitical as anything focusing on such a tense, fraught, and ugly subject can be. “We didn’t want to deal with the war because it is too complicated,” Ms. Pantirer said. “Hannah and I just couldn’t wrap our heads around it.” Instead, it focuses on the age-old, brand-new hate behind the war.

 

The exhibit is not only about pain, though; it’s also about resilience, hope, and the possibility of healing.

 

“This is very meaningful to me,” Ms. Pantirer said. “It is so personal, and it makes me so proud. I am a proud Jew — and these are desperate times.”

 

Murray Pantirer, the father of Ms. Pantirer’s husband, Larry, “was a Schindler survivor,” she said. He was a highly successful real estate developer who devoted his life to helping other Holocaust survivors and working to ensure that the Holocaust not fade from memory. Murray and Lucy Pantirer — her husband’s mother, another survivor with another harrowing story — were part of the community of survivors who settled in Hillside. “My father-in-law probably taught me more than anyone else I have ever known,” Ms. Pantirer said. “He taught me everything about life. One of the greatest things in the world is that I have his grandchildren.”

 

“Thank God for Oskar Schindler.”

 

That background made Ms. Pantirer’s desire to collect, curate, and open this show logical, if not inevitable.

 

Last week, Deborah Lipstadt, the historian whom President Joe Biden named the country’s special envoy to monitor and combat antisemitism — that position gives her the title of ambassador — visited Ms. Pantirer’s gallery. She was drawn by the show in general, and in particular by the enormous piece, by Los Angeles-based artist Marina Heintze, that combines Kanye West’s face with Hitler’s. But she didn’t know that the show also includes a portrait of her, by Isaac Ben Aharon; she also didn’t realize the connection between Nancy Pantirer, whom she had not known, and her father-in-law, whom she did know. The Jewish world is full of surprising connections.

Read the full article: 

https://njjewishnews.timesofisrael.com/artists-on-antisemitism/