The Jewish Museum
1109 5th Ave &, E 92nd St, New York, 10128
A central feature of the Jewish Museum's new Pruzan Family Center for Learning is a site-specific mural by Brooklyn-based artist Talia Levitt. Spanning 20 feet, this mural re-envisions a painting created by Levitt in her studio specifically for this project, featuring artifacts and objects from the Jewish Museum's collection. The painting was photographed and printed at double scale, then hand painted and embellished by the artist.
Flanked by sweeping views of Central Park, the tiered shelf is filled with objects inspired by the Jewish Museum's collection, from a nineteenth-century Persian wedding dress to a colonial American coffeepot. Its floral backdrop is borrowed from a seventeenth-century Italian Torah binder, a textile used to wrap the Torah scroll when it is not in use.
The artist’s daughter, born while the mural was being conceived and produced, appears at lower left, while the three adult figures are a splintered self-portrait. Like many new parents, particularly mothers, Levitt’s very essence seems pulled in different directions, a counterpoint to the dense interweaving of images and experiences in the mural.
