Special Exhibitions
Upcoming Special Exhibitions
Chosen Food: Cuisine, Culture and American Jewish Identity
January - May 2013
If every meal is a set of choices, what does the food we choose to eat say about who we are? Our exhibition Chosen Food: Cuisine, Culture, American Jewish Identity will examine the significance of Jewish meals. Organized by the Jewish Museum of Maryland, this exhibit will include Atlantan’s opinions, recollections, photographs and memorabilia of cooking and eating “Jewishly” as well as others from all around the United States.
Purim ladies from Chosen Food
Project Mah Jongg
May - October 2013
This wildly popular exhibition explores the traditions, history, and meaning of the game of mah jongg in Jewish-American life from the 1920s to today. This exhibition was made possible through the generosity of the National Mah Jongg League. Additional support provided by Sylvia Hassenfeld and the 2wice Arts Foundation.
The game of mah jongg is explored in dynamic formats throughout the exhibition, including 20th century popular objects and a visitor-activated soundscape that features clacking tiles, exclamations from games by Jewish-American and Chinese-American players, reminiscences, and vintage music. Large-scale graphics by Isaac Mizrahi, Maira Kalman, Bruce McCall, and Christoph Niemann illustrate mah jongg as ongoing muse for contemporary artists. A game table at the core of the exhibition invites visitors to engage in the continuing tradition.
The exhibition serves as historical treatment of the topic, a placeholder for memory, a generator of whimsy, and a stage set for the game’s continuation. The environment conveys how mah jongg is much more than a game: it is a carrier of fantasy, identity, memory, and meaning.
Project Mah Jongg was curated and is circulated by the Museum of Jewish Heritage – A Living Memorial to the Holocaust, New York.
Race: Are We So Different?
September 13, 2013 – January 2014
We all know that people look different. Throughout history, those differences have been a source of strength, community and personal identity. They have also been the basis for discrimination and oppression.
And while those differences are socially and culturally real, contemporary scientific understanding of race and human variation is complex and may challenge how we think about it. RACE: Are We So Different? helps visitors understand what race is and what it is not. It gives them the tools to recognize racial ideas and practices in contemporary American life.
The exhibit explores three themes: the everyday experience of race, the contemporary science that is challenging common ideas about race, and the history of this idea in the United States.