What’s Happening in Poland? The Role of Museums in Historical Debates
Recent efforts in Poland to dictate how the history of the Holocaust should be told have placed museums in the crosshairs of the politics of history. 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. Dr. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett will explore these issues, focusing on the POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, which she helped found. The museum won the European Museum of the Year Award in 2016.
Seating is limited and reservations are required. For further information or to RSVP, please contact the Holocaust Museum at 314-432-0020.
Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett was born in Canada during the Second World War to Jewish immigrants from Poland. She is Chief Curator of the Core Exhibition at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews and the Association of the Jewish Historical Institute of Poland. She is University Professor Emerita and Professor Emerita of Performance Studies at New York University, where she has been affiliated with the Skirball Department of Hebrew and Judaic Studies.
Her books include Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage; Image before My Eyes: A Photographic History of Jewish Life in Poland, 1864–1939 (with Lucjan Dobroszycki); They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust (with Mayer Kirshenblatt), The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times (with Jonathan Karp), and Anne Frank Unbound: Media, Imagination, Memory (with Jeffrey Shandler), among others.
She was honored for lifetime achievement by the Foundation for Jewish Culture, received honorary doctorates from the Jewish Theological Seminary of America and will receive an honorary doctorate from the University of Haifa in 2017. She received with the 2015 Marshall Sklare Award for her contribution to the social scientific study of Jewry, and was decorated with the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland for her contribution to POLIN Museum. She was recently elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. 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. She also advises on museum and exhibition projects in Lithuania and Israel.