IMC 2024: Sessions

Session 1302: Collecting and Displaying Medieval Jewish Artefacts and Heritage, II

Wednesday 3 July 2024, 16:30-18:00

Organisers:	Eva Frojmovic, Centre for Jewish Studies / School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies, University of Leeds Julie Harris, Independent Scholar
Moderator/Chair:	Eva Frojmovic, Centre for Jewish Studies / School of Fine Art, History of Art & Cultural Studies, University of Leeds
Paper 1302-a	The John Rylands Library's Hebrew Manuscript Collection and Its Audiences (Language: English) Zsofia Buda, John Rylands Library, University of Manchester Index terms: Hebrew and Jewish Studies and Manuscripts and Palaeography
Paper 1302-b	The Art of Reframing the Narrative: Jewish Material Culture in an Encyclopedic Museum (Language: English) Abigail H. Meyer, Graduate School of Jewish Studies, Touro University, New York Index terms: Art History - Decorative Arts, Art History - Painting, Hebrew and Jewish Studies and Manuscripts and Palaeography
Paper 1302-c	Renewing the Middle Ages at the ANU Museum, Tel Aviv (Language: English) Simona di Nepi, Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, Massachusetts Index terms: Architecture - Religious, Hebrew and Jewish Studies and Manuscripts and Palaeography
Abstract	The collecting and exhibiting of medieval artefacts by museums is never just about the objects in the display case. This is especially true when it comes to exhibiting medieval Jewish art, material culture, and heritage in places which were complicit in histories of oppression and intolerance or which may no longer have Jewish populations. Topics for discussion include Shifting paradigms of collecting and display: nationalist, ethnocentric, Eurocentric, transnational; The invention of Jewish tradition and the Middle Ages; The legacy of lachrymose history in the museum - from 1096 to the Holocaust; The pressures of cultural tourism on heritage spaces and museum culture, and the practice of art history.