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FrenchChief curator of museum of Polish Jewish history to speak here
The chief curator of the Core Exhibition at the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, located in Warsaw, Poland, will visit the Holocaust Museum & Learning Center on Thursday, Oct. 11, for a presentation on the role of museums in historical debates.
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett played an instrumental role in establishing the museum, which opened in 2013 on the 70th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. The core exhibition documents and celebrates the thousand-year history of the Jewish community in Poland that was decimated in the Holocaust. The museum won European Museum of the Year in 2016.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, a professor emerita of performance studies at New York University, will speak at the Jewish Federation of St. Louis’ Kaplan Feldman Complex, 12 Millstone Campus Drive. She will explore how museums can play a vital role in presenting difficult histories in ways that are authoritative, without being authoritarian, while remaining “zones of trust,” where difficult historical moments can be confronted and discussed.
Kirshenblatt-Gimblett has been honored for lifetime achievement by the Foundation for Jewish Culture and was decorated with the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland. She has received honorary doctorates from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and the University of Haifa.
She serves on Advisory Boards for the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research, Council of American Jewish Museums, Jewish Museum Vienna, Jewish Museum Berlin and the Jewish Museum and Tolerance Center in Moscow.
This 7 p.m. program is open to the public and free of charge. Seating is limited and reservations are required. For more information or to RSVP, contact Dan Reich at 314-442-3714 or [email protected].
This program is sponsored by the Rubin and Gloria Feldman Family Educational Institute of the Holocaust Museum and Learning Center, a department of Jewish Federation and Saint Louis Polonia Inc.
This program is part of a series of lectures presented by Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, sponsored by St. Louis Polonia Inc. For information about other programs, contact Jarek Czernikiewicz at 314-323-3841 or [email protected].