Exhibitions

Drawn from Memory: Holocaust and History in the Art of Samuel Bak

September 19–November 30, 2008
Print, Drawing, and Photography Study Center

Samuel Bak, Study for ApPEARing, 2007, mixed media
on paper.  

This exhibition highlights drawings by Samuel Bak, a contemporary artist whose work has continually addressed the tragedies of the Holocaust through personal metaphors. Reinterpreting iconic themes from Western traditions of art and combining it with recurrent iconography, Bak inflects artistic tropes with his own experience as a child who suffered the tragedies of loss and deprivation during World War II. Bak effectively engages in a dialogue with artists whose work represented the ideals of Western humanism, such as Michelangelo and Dürer, in order to visualize displacement and disruption experienced by millions as a result of the war. This exhibition is organized by the Block Museum in conjunction with the tenth Lessons and Legacies conference sponsored by the Holocaust Educational Foundation and Northwestern University. 

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Free guided tours of this exhibition and Magdalena Abakanowicz: Reality of Dreams will take place Sundays at 2 pm from September 28 to November 30. Jeffry Diefendorf, Pamela Shulman Professor in European and Holocaust Studies at the University of New Hampshire, will speak about Bak's work at 6 pm on Wednesday, October 29.