Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaïsme
The Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaïsme (Museum of Art and History of Judaism or MahJ) is the largest French museum of Jewish art and history of Judaism, opened in 1998 . It is located in the Hôtel de Saint-Aignan in Paris district Marais . The museum shows the history and culture of the Jews of Europe and North Africa from the Middle Ages to the 20th century. Its collection of religious objects, archives, manuscripts and works of art highlights the contribution that Jews in France and around the world, particularly in the field of art, have made. The museum's collections include works by Marc Chagalland Amedeo Modigliani . The museum operates a bookstore, a media library with an online catalog accessible to the public, and an auditorium. It offers guided tours in English during the tourist season (April to July).
History of the museum
In 1985, Claude-Gerard Marcus, Victor Klagsbald and Alain Erlande-Brandenburg started a project to set up a museum for Jewish art and history in Paris, which was supported by the City of Paris and the Ministry of Culture. The aim of the project was to equip Paris with a museum dedicated to Judaism and then to make accessible the national collections located in the reserves of the National Museum of the Middle Ages . The project was headed from 1988 by Laurence Sigal. The then mayor of Paris, Jacques Chirac , made the Hotel de Saint-Aignan available as a facility for the future museum. The decision to install the museum in the Marais was a historical one. Many Jews have lived in the Marais since the late 18th century. The district is also a cultural center with museums such as the Musée Carnavalet , the Musée Picasso and the Shoah Memorial ( Mémorial de la Shoah ).
The architects Catherine Bizouard and François Pin were responsible for redesigning the interior of the building.
History of the collection
The museum's permanent collection consists of three sources.
- The Jewish Art Museum of Paris, whose collection was entrusted to the mahJ. They were mainly European religious objects, graphic works by Russian and German Jewish artists and artists from the École de Paris (Art) Paris School, and architectural models of European synagogues that were destroyed by the Nazis .
- The National Museum of the Middle Ages in Paris. This collection was compiled by Isaac Strauss, a 19th century French Jew. On his travels through Europe, he collected 149 religious objects, including furniture, ceremonial objects and Hebrew manuscripts. A 15th century sacred ark from Italy, wedding rings, and illuminated ketubbot (marriage contracts) are examples of items kept in his collection. Strauss is considered to be the first collector of Jewish objects. Part of his collection was exhibited at the 1878 World's Fair. After Strauss' death, Nathaniel de Rothschild acquired the collection in 1890. It handed it over to the state, which handed it over to the Musée national du MoyenÂge. Sixty-six rare medieval grave stelae discovered in 1894 on Rue Pierre-Sarrazin are on long-term loan from the Cluny Museum.
- A number of long-term loans from museums such as the Center Pompidou , the Musée d'Orsay , the Louvre and the Musée National des Arts d'Afrique et d'Océanie . The museum's collection was also supplemented by loans from the Paris Consistory, the Jewish Museum in Prague and with the help of donations from the French Fondation du Judaïsme . The museum has also acquired a large collection of photographs. The collection contains over 1,500 of them, mostly from Jewish communities from the past and present, from historical events and from Jewish architectural heritage.
aims
The MahJ chose the period through Jewish history from the beginnings in France to the founding of the State of Israel without including the Holocaust . The Shoah memorial project to commemorate the Holocaust already existed when the Mahj was created.
The museum's collection is arranged chronologically and the works presented can be seen in their historical context. Unlike other European Jewish museums, the MahJ does not follow the phases of religious life. The museum also examines fundamental questions about Judaism and Jewish identity.
A considerable part of the collection consists of works of art from the Middle Ages to the early 20th century.
The most important exhibits
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The gates of the cemetery
Marc Chagall's depiction of a Jewish cemetery is part of a broader movement of rediscovering the heritage and traditional folk art by artists of the early 20th century. When he was painting it, Chagall had just discovered his grandfather's grave: this painting is in part a reaction to that event.
Medieval tombstones
The remains of a 13th century Parisian Jewish cemetery were discovered in 1849. Numerous tombstones are exhibited in the room dedicated to French Judaism in the Middle Ages.
Sukkah
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The wooden sukkah (hut for Sukkot ) dates from the 19th century. The panels are decorated with paintings of an Austrian village, the first words of the Decalogue and a view of Jerusalem .
Festive robe
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Kswa el Kbirah , also called berberisca , is a wedding dress that is typical of the large coastal cities of western Morocco . Its design reflects the Spanish heritage that influenced the making of this costume. Several similar robes were donated to the museum by Moroccan Jewish families who lived in France after decolonization.
Holy ark
This piece of furniture from a synagogue in Modena is the only remaining Ashkenazi ark from the 15th century. The structure and design are reminiscent of the shape of a fortified tower. It was probably created by the Italian artists Lorenzo and Cristoforo Canozzi.
French Jews in the Middle Ages
The focus of the exhibition in this room is a collection of tombstones from a Jewish cemetery in Paris that dates from the 13th century. These tombstones are the largest archaeological finds discovered on French soil. At the other end of the room, valuable manuscripts are displayed in a showcase. Four rare ritual objects from the time before the expulsion of the Jews from France illustrate the roots of medieval Jewish life.
The Jews in the Italian Renaissance
This room shows the cultural splendor of some cities like Modena and Venice . It is dedicated to the furnishing of a synagogue, including a rare sacred ark from Modena, cutlery and liturgical embroidery from the Italian Jewish world. Illuminated marriage contracts ( ketubbot ) are issued in frames. Several 18th-century paintings attributed to Marco Marcuola depict religious scenes from Jewish life in Venice. A masterpiece from 1720 by Alessandro Magnasco describes a late Baroque Jewish burial.
Hanukkah
A whole room is dedicated to the Hanukkah festival. It presents a collection of Hanukkiyot in different shapes and designs, of various origins and from different eras.
Amsterdam
A small collection of Dutch engravings from the 17th and 18th centuries depicts the migrations of Spanish Jews after their expulsion from Spain . A series of engravings by Bernard Picart entitled Ceremonies and Religious Customs of All Peoples of the World shows the rituals of the newly converted Portuguese Christians who after After their expulsion in 1496/97, they again adopted the Jewish faith and were integrated into the communities of Amsterdam , London and Bordeaux . A showcase presents the development of Hebrew printing through a display of incunabula and rare books.
Next year in Jerusalem
One of the main works of the museum is an Austrian sukkah from the 19th century, which is adorned with important places of Judaism: the old city of Jerusalem, the ten commandments, the place where one lives. It consists of wooden panels and can therefore be completely dismantled. In this section, further ritual objects and texts are presented and the three pilgrimage festivals - Passover , Shavuot and Sukkot - are described. It also emphasizes the central place that Jerusalem occupies in the Jewish consciousness.
The Ashkenazi world
A painting by Samuel Hirszenberg with the title The Jewish Cemetery (1892) describes the harsh living conditions of Jewish communities in Poland and Russia caused by the pogroms of the late 19th century. Pictures by Marc Chagall testify to the existence of Jews in the shtetl . Works on Shabbat, prayers and liturgy are exhibited on the upper floor. This section introduces the Ashkenazi custom of making embroidered, embroidered or painted mappots , linen scarves from diapers used to swaddle a baby during circumcision .
The Sephardic world
The same subjects are dealt with in the Sephardic Collection as in the Ashkenazi Collection, in order to show the relationship and the contrasts between the two traditions.
The religious customs of the Sephardic Jews are represented through various textiles, objects used in the ritual of the synagogue, and also through domestic objects and folk art.
Emancipation of the French Jews
This section shows a panorama of French Jewry in the 19th century. It focuses on the most important moments of the integration of Jews into modern society, in particular on the establishment of consistories (1808) initiated by Napoleon Bonaparte and which gave French Jewry an organizational framework. The 19th century is illustrated by works by Alphonse Lévy , Edouard Brandon, Edward Moyse, Samuel Hirszenberg, Maurycy Gottlieb and Maurycy Minkovski. The social rise of many Jews in France is represented through several portraits of political, economic and cultural figures such as Rachel, Adolphe Crémieux and the brothers Isaac Pereire and Émile Pereire .
This section also contains elements of the Dreyfus Fund, an archive that was given to the museum by Alfred Dreyfus ' grandchildren. The Dreyfus Affair was a significant event in France at the end of the 19th century. The museum's library contains over three hundred publications on this. In the center of the museum courtyard is an eight-foot-high reproduction of a statue of Alfred Dreyfus made in 1986 by the French artist Louis "TIM" Mitelberg.
Intellectual and Political Movements in Europe
This section introduces the intellectual life of European Jews around the turn of the century, including the emergence of Zionism , the revival of the Hebrew language , the flourishing of Yiddish culture, and the development of political movements in Russia and Poland such as the Bund . A small section is devoted to the establishment of the State of Israel.
Jewish presence in 20th century art
This room contains works from the early 20th century on paper and books that illustrate the rebirth of Jewish culture in Germany and Russia at that time. This section shows the contribution of Jewish artists to world art in the early 20th century. She depicts artists of the Paris School such as Pascin, Amedeo Modigliani , Chaim Soutine , Michel Kikoïne , Jacques Lipschitz and Chana Orloff. The museum has acquired an archive collection of over a thousand documents on the artist Jacques Lipschitz, including numerous photographs and manuscripts.
Being a Jew in Paris in 1939
To complement this presentation, the contemporary artist Christian Boltanski has set up an installation that is located in a small courtyard within the museum. It consists of the names of the Jewish and non-Jewish residents of the Hotel de Saint-Aignan on the eve of the Second World War . The installation reveals the history of the people who lived in the building before the war.
status
The Museum for Art and History of Judaism is a non-profit association. It is a public museum sponsored by the City of Paris and the Ministry of Culture. Its board of directors consists of five representatives from this ministry, five from the city of Paris and six from Jewish institutions; and four people selected by the Pro MahJ Foundation.
The Pro MahJ Foundation
The Pro MahJ was founded in 2003 to support the museum's activities, including financing exhibitions and publications, and to enrich the collection. It was founded on the initiative of Claire Maratier (1915–2013), daughter of the painter Michel Kikoin. The foundation receives donations and bequests to support the museum financially. The Maratier Prize is awarded to a contemporary artist every two years.
Exhibitions and installations
The museum promotes contemporary Jewish art by organizing temporary exhibitions. In November 2016, a temporary installation by the contemporary Israeli artist Sigalit Landau entitled Miqlat (Protection) was exhibited in the inner courtyard of the museum. The museum also displayed two works by Israeli artist Moshe Ninio: Glass (es) and Morning . In the past, the museum has exhibited modern and contemporary artists such as Sophie Calle, Gotlib, Christian Boltanski, Michel Nedjar and Micha Ullman.
literature
- Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme: Guide du musée , Paris 1998 (French and English edition)
- Connaissance des arts: Musée d'art et d'histoire du Judaïsme (Numéro spécial), Paris 1998
Web links
- Musée d'Art et d'Histoire du Judaïsme (French and English text)
- Paris description (English text)
Coordinates: 48 ° 52 ' N , 2 ° 21' E