Curating Between Hope and Despair: Creating POLIN Museum

A fascinating and insightful lecture by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Chief Curator of the Core Exhibition at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews.

Facing the Monument to the Ghetto Heroes on the site of the Warsaw ghetto and prewar Jewish neighborhood, the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews completes the memorial complex. At the monument we honor those who died by remembering how they died. At the museum we honor them by remembering how they lived. This lecture explores the creation of the POLIN Museum and its multimedia narrative exhibition, a journey of a thousand years, and their potential to be an agent of transformation that can move an entire society forward.

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is University Professor Emerita and Professor Emerita of Performance Studies at New York University and Chief Curator of the Core Exhibition at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews. Her books include Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage; Image before My Eyes: A Photographic History of Jewish Life in Poland, 1864–1939 (with Lucjan Dobroszycki); They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust (with Mayer Kirshenblatt), winner of two book awards, The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times (with Jonathan Karp), and Anne Frank Unbound: Media, Imagination, Memory (with Jeffrey Shandler), among others.

She was honored for lifetime achievement by the Foundation for Jewish Culture, received the Mlotek Prize for Yiddish and Yiddish Culture, honorary doctorates from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America, University of Haifa, and Indiana University, and the 2015 Marshall Sklare Award for her contribution to the social scientific study of Jewry.

She was decorated with the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland for her contribution to POLIN Museum. She was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She serves on Advisory Boards for the Council of American Jewish Museums, Jewish Museum Vienna, Jewish Museum Berlin, and the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow. She also advises on museum and exhibition projects in Lithuania, Albania, United States, and Israel.

This 60 minute public lecture will be held in MSB 1.37 the University of Waikato in Hamilton, starting at 11am, followed by a light lunch and refreshments. Free parking is available on campus via Gate 7, Hillcrest Road.

Seats are very limited and registrations are essential.

Please register your attendance by clicking on the 'register' button on the University of Waikato website link.