The Jewish Museum on 92nd St is not always the most exciting place. The permanent collection is quite limited and more child oriented. They do however, once in a blue moon have temporary exhibitions that are breathtaking. The last one that I saw was many years ago. My sister was shorter and I was her chubby twin brother. An incredible collection of Chagall paintings were all in one place, and we seized the once in a lifetime opportunity to visit the exhibit several times. This time it was another beloved Jewish painter, Amedeo Modigliani. The exhibit is temporary, and running from September 15th of this year to February 4th 2018. Whenever I entered a museum, I would always find Modigliani’s work if it was there. This is due to the artist’s distinctive style. He painted portraits of elegant individuals, usually beautiful women, either clients, lovers, or both. They always have beautiful long necks, noses that any Jewish person like myself would fall for immediately, and curved questioning eyes. These portraits carried a part of Modigliani’s personality over. He was inspired by African masks in developing his style. A suffering bohemian living in Paris at the turn of the century, Modigliani felt like an outsider. Jews were persecuted at that time, nothing new, and Modigliani took great pains to proudly make his Jewishness known wherever possible. He would famously introduce himself in the following way, “Hello my name is Amedeo, I am a Jew.” The exhibit had on display, many of his early sketches, never seen before as well as several completed paintings. I did not know this upon entering the museum, but we were in for a shock. One of his sketches on display that day, the one that was in all of the subway commercials advertising the exhibit, and on the cover of the program, was of a famous Russian poet who Modigliani fell in love with the two times she visited Paris. The two kept in touch until suffering artist Modigliani, died at the young age of 35. Anna Akhmatova was one of the four greatest poets of the Soviet era. I heard her words around the house growing up. My mother knows entire novels of her poetry by heart and would even visit her grave in the countryside during the summer as a little girl. It was overwhelming, the realization that this brilliant poetess who was so close to my heart was on display over the subway and I didn’t even know it. The funny thing is that Anna Akhmatova was not Jewish, but still had those beautiful sharp features, the nose Modigliani would have admired so much, and a bohemian air that drew the painter in. What’s more she was the face of the whole exhibition. I highly recommend this exhibit for anyone who hasn’t seen the Jewish Museum yet. It means a great deal that the culture my parents kept around so carefully for us to understand has been shown to the general public. Maybe it’s a sign of even more exciting things to come for NYC’s art scene.
