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L'Chaim! The Jewish Museum’s Conversation Series with Artists on Instagram Live

Installation view of the exhibition Using Walls, Floors, and Ceilings: Beatriz Milhazes, May 6 - September 18, 2016. The Jewish Museum, NY.

Credit: Photo by: David Heald

Release Date: May 1, 2020

L'Chaim! The Jewish Museum’s Conversation Series with Artists on Instagram Live

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Join Jewish Museum Curator Kelly Taxter and Artists Beatriz Milhazes (May 7); Andrea Bowers (May 14); and Laurie Simmons (May 21)

New York, NY, May 1, 2020 — The Jewish Museum invites you to L’Chaim!, a conversation series on Instagram Live with Kelly Taxter, Barnett and Annalee Newman Curator of Contemporary Art, and artists who have exhibited at the Jewish Museum. Watch Taxter in conversation with Beatriz Milhazes (May 7), Andrea Bowers (May 14), and Laurie Simmons (May 21), on the Jewish Museum’s Instagram @thejewishmuseum at 5:00 pm EDT.

L'Chaim
is inspired by a series of exhibitions of commissioned artwork for the Jewish Museum lobby. Inaugurated in 2012 with an installation by Lawrence Weiner, a diverse group of artists presented their work in our most public-facing space. The artists’ projects greeted visitors upon first entering our doors, and were visible from both inside and outside the Museum, whether we were open or closed.

L’Chaim!, Hebrew for "to life!," is a series that aims to bring our community together—wherever they are—around the always-vital encounter with art. We invite you to join us for a drink and a conversation, to connect with the artists who have exhibited in our lobby and special exhibitions, and who have brought meaning and life to the Jewish Museum.

Schedule

Thursday, May 7, 5:00 pm EDT: Beatriz Milhazes
This event is presented in collaboration with Pace Gallery.
Instagram: @thejewishmuseum and @pacegallery

Thursday, May 14, 5:00 pm EDT: Andrea Bowers
Instagram: @thejewishmuseum and @radicalhospitality

Thursday, May 21, 5:00 pm EDT: Laurie Simmons
Instagram: @thejewishmuseum and @lauriesimmons

Beatriz Milhazes
Beatriz Milhazes’s work bursts with a chromatic and freeing vitality. Renowned for her visual language rooted in painting, collage, and printmaking, she draws on her native Rio de Janeiro. Her use of color and geometry is mined from place—the botanical gardens and the Tijuca forest near her studio, the surrounding city, its oceanfront, and the cultural motifs of Brazil—and from memory. This process culminates in the artist’s patented form of abstraction, which she has termed “chromatic free geometry.” In the 1980s, she headed a new generation of artists—Geração 80 or 80s Generation—that embraced painting over the conceptual practices of the 1970s. Marked by the seminal exhibition Como vai você geração 80? (How Are You 80s Generation?) in 1984, this return to painting saw a freedom in process, in the studio as a space for action, and in a rich and amalgamated form of Brazilian art making influenced by European Modernism, the Baroque, and the Antropofagia of the late-1920s. The exhibition Using Walls, Floors, and Ceilings: Beatriz Milhazes was presented at the Jewish Museum in 2016.

Andrea Bowers
Andrea Bowers is an artist and activist based in Los Angeles. Her practice includes explicitly political works that span drawing, video, and installation -- dealing with the struggle for gender, racial, environmental, and immigration justice. She has recently had solo exhibitions at the Museum Abteiberg, Germany (2020) and the Weserburg Museum für moderne Kunst, Germany (2019). Her work can be found in the collections at The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum of American Art, the Hirshhorn Museum, MOCA LA, and others. Bowers was included in the Jewish Museum exhibitions Take Me (I’m Yours) (2016-17) and The Arcades: Contemporary Art and Walter Benjamin (2017).

Laurie Simmons
Laurie Simmons grew up in a post-World War II suburb on Long Island, one of three daughters raised in a Jewish household. Simmons knew she would be an artist from a very young age and regularly traveled into Manhattan to visit museums, exposing herself to art, fashion, and music. She received her BFA from the Tyler School of Art at Temple University in 1971, after which she moved to New York City to pursue her artistic career. Solo exhibitions of Simmons’ work have been held at the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago, IL (2019); Modern Art Museum Fort Worth, TX (2018); Contemporary Art Museum St. Louis, MI (2015); the Neues Museum, Nuremberg Germany (2014); the Print Gallery at the New York Public Library (2010); The Baltimore Museum of Art (1997); The Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (1987); and P.S. 1, New York (1979). Her work has also been shown at The Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston; The Museum of Modern Art, New York; The Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; and the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York, among others. The Jewish Museum presented the exhibition Laurie Simmons: This is How We See in 2015 and her work is also in the Museum’s collection.

About the Jewish Museum

Located on New York City’s famed Museum Mile, the Jewish Museum is a distinctive hub for art and Jewish culture for people of all backgrounds. Founded in 1904, the Museum was the first institution of its kind in the United States and is one of the oldest Jewish museums in the world. Devoted to exploring art and Jewish culture from ancient to contemporary, the Museum offers diverse exhibitions and programs, and maintains a unique collection of nearly 30,000 works of art, ceremonial objects, and media reflecting the global Jewish experience over more than 4,000 years. Visit TheJewishMuseum.org for more information.

Press contacts

Daniela Stigh, 212.423.3330 or [email protected]
Anne Scher, 212.423.3271 or [email protected]
[email protected] (general inquiries)