Hanukkah Lamps Selected by Maurice Sendak Opens at The Jewish Museum

The Jewish Museum will present An Artist Remembers: Hanukkah Lamps Selected by Maurice Sendak from December 2, 2011 through January 29, 2012. This exhibition features thirty-three Hanukkah lamps of varied eras and styles, chosen by renowned author and illustrator Maurice Sendak from The Jewish Museum's extensive collection. This highly personal selection of lamps, many never before exhibited, echoes the quality of line and depth of emotion that define Sendak's work. Hanukkah begins at sundown on Tuesday, December 20 and continues until sundown on Wednesday, December 28, 2011.

Hanukkah Lamp, Karl Hagenauer, Vienna, designed 1919-28, copper alloy: cast. The Jewish Museum, New York: Purchase: Gift in memory of Joseph B. Hornik and Elizabeth Cats, 2005-43.
This exhibition also includes two original drawings for Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories (1966) and In Grandpa's House (1985), and audio excerpts of a conversation between Maurice Sendak and Jewish Museum curators Susan Braunstein and Claudia Nahson recorded as he picked out the works for the exhibition. The lamps Sendak found most compelling and poignant are those that "go right to the heart," whose "beauty is contained." Yet his sense of humor was never far from the surface: as he made his choices he often free-associated, whimsically recalling old movies and Catskills family vacations. Above all, he was guided by his sensibility as an artist and author.

The Jewish Museum possesses the most significant holdings of Jewish ceremonial works in the Western Hemisphere including the world's foremost collection of Hanukkah lamps.

The lamps on view reflect the diversity of the Museum's collection ranging from an early 20th century lamp, created in the well-known Hagenauer Workshops, with spiral elements and flower buds characteristic of the Viennese Art Nouveau, to an 18th century piece from Frankfurt am Main, Germany, decorated with two smiling lions supporting a heart and topped by a large stork. Lamps from Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, Galicia, Germany, Israel, Italy, Netherlands, Poland, Russia, Ukraine, and the United States are included.

For Sendak, choosing from among such a wealth of lamps was an emotional experience that brought up powerful memories, both joyful and haunting. Many of the pieces come from the vanished Eastern European world of his immigrant Jewish parents, so movingly evoked in his work and reflected in the two drawings on display. The sheer number of these lamps and their rich decoration - featuring Eastern European architectural motifs, elaborate floral ornamentation, and fantastic animals - stirred his deep sense of loss for the members of his family who perished in the Holocaust - a trauma he has attempted to work through in much of his art.

Hanukkah Lamp, Barukh Shlomo Griegst, Copenhagen, 1924, silver: cast. The Jewish Museum, New York: Purchase: Judaica Acquisitions Fund and Bjorn Bamberger Gift, 1994-6.
The organizers of the exhibition, Susan L. Braunstein, Curator of Archaeology and Judaica, and Claudia J. Nahson, Curator, both at The Jewish Museum, observed, "We hope that visitors will be moved in various ways by the lamps. For Maurice Sendak, they are powerful repositories of memory, embodying stories that illuminate the past for new generations. The lamps speak to us of their survival through time and of the people that once made or owned them." Visitors will be able to understand the deep connections between the emotions they evoked in Maurice Sendak and his aesthetic choices. The public will be invited to share their thoughts sparked by the Museum's lamps or by personal objects they treasure on a board in the exhibition. Periodically, selected visitor memories will be posted on The Jewish Museum's website.