"Zing!" Loft Artists Association Spring Exhibition Opens on Saturday, April 26, at 4-6 pm; Artists Talk on May 2nd at 2 pm

 Dear Friends,

It's been a pleasure and an honor to serve as the juror for "Zing! Expressing Joy and Positivity Through Art."  

Thank you so much, Emi Subotovsky, a New York Arts Exchange member, and Soledad Bence, both Loft Artists Association members and co-chairs for this year's Spring Juried Exhibition, for inviting me to jury this show. It's been fabulous to work with you!

Please join me today, Saturday, April 26, from 4 - 6 pm at Loft Artists Association's opening for "Zing!"   

And/or on Saturday, May 10th, for the Artists Walk and Talk at 2 pm.

Gallery Hours: Saturday and Sunday, 1 - 4 pm, through June 8th.

Loft Artists Association, 575 Pacific Street, Stamford, CT

I look forward to seeing you there!

Warm wishes,

Beth

Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, PhD

Director/Owner, New York Arts Exchange, LLC

 

Berthe Weill Exhibition at Grey Art Museum - a conversation with co-curator Lynn Gumpert on Thursday, Feb. 13 at 4 pm ET

 

A conversation with Lynn Gumpert, Director of the Grey Art Gallery and Co-Curator of Make Way for Berthe Weill, and Beth Gersh-Nesic, on Thursday, February 13, 2025 at 4 pm ET, 1 pm PT, 2pm MT, 3 pm CT, 9 pm UK time, 10 pm France

Hosted by the AFUSA on Zoom. Registration here

Make Way for Berthe Weill: Art Dealer of the Parisian Avant-Garde, currently at the Grey Art Museum, New York University (through March 1st), shines a bright spotlight on an unsung hero who believed in the emerging artists of the early 20th century, even when she earned very little for her efforts. Picasso, Matisse, Modigliani, Fernand Léger, Diego Rivera, and Raul Dufy are among the best-known artists in this exhibition. However, there are many lesser-known artists among the 110 paintings, drawings, prints, and sculptures, as well as photographs, catalogs, and other archival material illustrating her life and gallery.  This homage to Berthe Weill (1865-1951) also reintroduces numerous gifted women artists: Suzanne Valadon, Emilie Charmy, Jacqueline Marval, and Hermione David, among many others. 

A conversation with co-curator Lynn Gumpert, Director of the Grey Art Museum, and art historian Beth Gersh-Nesic, will shed light on Berthe Weill's biography, the artists included in the exhibition, and the fascinating backstory for this show, which took over a decade of dedication from a brilliant team of women arts professionals. The exhibition will be on view at the Montreal Museum of Fine Art from May through September 2025, and then in Paris at the Musée de l'Orangerie, from October 2025 through January 2026. 

Lynn Gumpert

Museum director, curator, administrator, and art historian, Lynn Gumpert has overseen and organized exhibitions on four continents. For more than 25 years, she has served as Director of New York University’s Grey Art Museum, formerly known as the Grey Art Gallery. During her tenure, the Grey has presented over 75 exhibitions. Among them are: Americans in Paris: Artists Working in Post-War France, 1946-1962 (March-July 2024); Taking Shape: Abstraction from the Arab World, 1950s 1980s (2020); The Beautiful Brain: The Drawings of Santiago Ramón y Cajal (2018); and The Downtown Show: The New York Art Scene, 1974–1984 (2006). Gumpert received a BA from the University of California at Berkeley and an MA in art history from the University of Michigan. The French government honored Gumpert with the distinction of Chevalier of the Order of Arts and Letters in 1999.

Beth S. Gersh-Nesic

Art historian, Beth Gersh-Nesic is the Director of the New York Arts Exchange, an arts education service, and she is a staff writer with Bonjour Paris, an online arts and culture magazine.  Her books and articles focus on Picasso, the School of Paris, women artists, and the poet/art critic André Salmon, who wrote about several artists on view in the Berthe Weill exhibition at the Grey.  Her translations of Salmon's books include André Salmon on French Modern Art (Cambridge University Press, 2005), and Pablo Picasso, André Salmon and “Young French Painting” (Za Mir Press, 2022). She recently retired from teaching undergraduate and graduate art history courses.

To register for this Zoom event click here , as a friend of the speaker.

Berthe Weill image credits: * Émilie Charmy, Portrait of Berthe Weill, 1910-1914, in the exhibition “Make Way for Berthe Weill: Art Dealer of the Parisian Avant-Garde.”Credit: Montreal Museum of Fine Arts and Alberto Ricci; Photo by MMFA, Julie Ciot

Happy Holidays 2023 - Wishing You Comfort and Joy!

 

Central Park in the Snow

Happy Holidays!

      Peace be with you now and through 2024 

Love and hugs,

Beth 

and the New York Arts Exchange 

Sarah Bernhardt in New York and Paris: A Conversation with Carol Ockman and Beth Gersh-Nesic, Thursday, November 30th at 4 pm on Zoom

 

Thursday, November 30, 2023
1pm PT / 2pm MT / 3pm CT / 4pm ET
Federation of Alliances Françaises USA
In English

Join us as art historian Beth S. Gersh-Nešić talks to Sarah Bernhardt scholar, Carol Ockman, about the recent exhibit on the famous actress at the Petit Palais in Paris.

Writer, performer, and curator, Carol Ockman is a world-renowned scholar of Sarah Bernhardt. She is co-author of Sarah Bernhardt: The Art of High Drama (2005), whose awarding-winning exhibition and catalog she and Kenneth E. Silver curated and wrote for the Jewish Museum (New York, 2005-06). In addition to lecturing widely on Sarah Bernhardt, she was interviewed as Bernhardt in “Wish You Were Here,” as part of a series inspired by Andy Warhol’s Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century. Her memoir, Sarah Bernhardt’s Handkerchief (in progress), which she wrote and performs as a one-woman show, weaves together close encounters with stardom, her father’s suicide, and the power of objects from the past to mitigate loss.

Ockman has also written extensively on nineteenth-century art (Ingres’s Eroticized Bodies: Retracing the Serpentine Line) and contemporary art and culture, including art criticism and essays on Barbie, the nude, portraiture, and stereotypes. As Curator at Large for Marie Selby Botanical Gardens (Sarasota, Florida, 2016-2022), she put major works of art in dialogue with living plants, working with horticulturalists to produce six exhibitions on Marc Chagall, Andy Warhol, Paul Gauguin, Salvador Dalí, Roy Lichtenstein, and Robert Mapplethorpe and Patti Smith. As writer and performer, Ockman also collaborates with other creatives, in works like Netta Yerushalmy’s Paramodernities (2016-2020), a six-part piece that queries iconic dances from Nijinsky to Cunningham. A long-time teacher at Williams College, Ockman is now Robert Sterling Clark Professor of Art Emerita.

Beth S. Gersh-Nešić, Ph.D. is an art historian and the director of the New York Arts Exchange, an arts education service.  She writes about Picasso, Cubism, the French poet/art critic/journalist André Salmon, modernism, and contemporary artists. Her most recent book is Pablo Picasso, André Salmon and “Young French Painting,“ a translation with annotations and an introduction by Jacqueline Gojard, Professor Emeritus, University of Paris III. She is also a staff writer for Bonjour Paris, an online magazine, and a Senior Lecturer at Mercy University. Her article on the Sarah Bernhardt exhibition at Wildenstein Gallery appeared in Women Artists News (Spring 1985).

This event will be on Zoom and is free for all Alliance Française members, AATF members, and invited guests of the presenter or publicist.  Click here to register.  You are a "guest of the lecturer,"

Autumn in New York - Fall 2022 Beth's Lectures

Dear Friends,

Please join me for these lectures this fall -

Sandra Smith

Beth Gersh-Nesic interviews award-winning translator Sandra Smith

on "Translating Irène Némirovsky"

hosted by Alliance Française Fédération - 

Tuesday, October 11, 2022 - at 7 pm. 

 on Zoom, no charge  

Please register here.

 

Beth S. Gersh-Nesic

Andrea Mantegna, Judith and her Maidservant, 1490s

Beth Gersh-Nesic on "Judith and Hanukah"

Wednesday, October 26 - at 10:30 am

hosted by Learning in Retirement

Temple Beth El, Stamford, CT

in person, $10 

Please register here

Otto Wegener, Marcel Proust, c. 1895

Beth Gersh-Nesic on "Proust and Art"

Tuesday, November 15, 2022 at 5 pm

hosted by the Alliance Française de Greenwich and Byram Shubert Library

Byram Shubert Library, 21 Mead Ave, Greenwich, CT

on Zoom, no charge

Please register here

Looking forward to seeing you there - 

With love and warm wishes for Fall 2022 and 5783

Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, PhD

Director and owner

New York Arts Exchange, LLC

An Interview with award-winning translator Sandra Smith in print and on Zoom

 

Dear Friends,

It is a thrill and an honor to interview the gifted translator Sandra Smith, whose work you might know from reading the best-seller Suite Française (Knopf, 2006) by Irène Némirovsky. Our conversation in print for the online magazine Bonjour Paris was published last week.  And our conversation in person, focusing on Smith's last three translations will take place on Zoom next Tuesday.  You can register with our host the Federation of Alliances Françaises by clicking this link. 

I hope to see you then - 

Bien à vous,

Beth

Tuesday, March 1, 2022
4pm PST / 5pm MST / 6pm CST / 7pm EST
Federation of Alliances Françaises USA
In English

Join us for a conversation with Sandra Smith, award-winning translator of French literature, as she discusses the artistry and challenges involved in translating with Beth S. Gersh-Nešić. Their discussions will focus specifically on three significant works: The Prodigal Child, by Irène Némirovsky, In the Shadows of Paris: The Nazi Concentration Camp That Dimmed the City of Light , by Anne Sinclair and Inseparable, by Simone de Beauvoir.

Sandra Smith has translated twelve of Irène Némirovsky’s novels, including the international sensation Suite Française, into English. She has also translated works by Albert Camus, Guy de Maupassant, and Simone de Beauvoir, among many others and is the recipient of numerous awards including the National Jewish Book Award and the PEN Translation Prize.

Beth Susan Gersh-Nešić, Ph.D. is an art historian and the director of the New York Arts Exchange, an arts education service. Her translation and annotation of André Salmon’s first two books on art were published as André Salmon on French Modern Art (Cambridge University Press, 2005), and her most recent book is a translation of Salmon expert Dr. Jacqueline Gojard’s Pablo Picasso and André Salmon: The Painter, the Poet and the Portraits (Za Mir Press, 2019).  She contributes to the online magazine Bonjour Paris and teaches art history at Mercy College.   

Irène Némirovsky was born in Kiev, Ukraine, in 1903 into a wealthy Jewish family and was raised in a life of privilege in Europe. After fleeing Russia during the Revolution, she immersed herself in the company of thinkers, artists, musicians, and other cultural elites as part of the Parisian literati of her time. Sixty-two years after her death, in 2004, the never-before-published Suite Française brought international acclaim to this gifted writer, whose life was tragically lost in the Holocaust. The Prodigal Child can also be found at the following booksellers: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Bookshop.org.

Anne Sinclair was born in New York City and moved to France with her family as a young girl. There she rose to fame, in part due to her family’s vast collection of paintings by Picasso, Braque, Matisse, and Léger, which she would become heir to, but also because her prominence as a highly regarded broadcast journalist led to her serving as the model for statues of Marianne, the national emblem of France, symbolizing liberty. From 1984 to 1997 she hosted 7 sur 7, France’s most popular Sunday evening news show, similar to CBS’s 60 Minutes; during that time, she interviewed many world figures, including Bill Clinton, Mikhail Gorbachev, Shimon Peres, and Prince Charles. She is the author of numerous bestsellers in France. In the Shadows of Paris, which was recently recognized as a top-four finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, can also be found at the following booksellers: Amazon, Barnes & Noble, Books-A-Million, Bookshop.org.

Simone de Beauvoir was a French author and philosopher. She wrote novels, monographs on philosophy, political and social issues, essays, biographies, and an autobiography. She is now best known for her metaphysical novels, including She Came to Stay and The Mandarins, and for her 1949 treatise The Second Sex, a detailed analysis of women’s oppression and a foundational tract of contemporary feminism.

This event will be on Zoom and is free for all Alliance Française members, AATF members, and invited guests of the presenter or publicist. Non-members or persons who have no AF chapter nearby can purchase tickets ($10). Please click here to register.

Zoom Art Lecture on Queen Esther, Monday, January 10th at 10 am - Free

 

Jan Victors, The Feast of Queen Esther and King Ahasuerus, 1640

Please join me for my art history slide lecture:

"Queen Esther in Art: Racism, Religion and Resistance"

hosted by the Shames JCC on the Hudson

Monday, January 10th at 10 AM

on Zoom

Your zoom link is located here

I look forward to seeing you then -

Beth

Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.

Director and owner

New York Arts Exchange, LLC

June 2021 Happenings - Studio visits and a request to respond to the Met Museum's Documentary

 

Lord Frederic Leighton, Flaming June, 1895

Museo de Arte de Ponce, Ponce, Puerto Rico

Dear Friends,

June 2021 - how can that be?  Time seems to be speeding up since New York started to relax its Covid-19 restrictions and now, it's full speed ahead into summer. Yes, the weather hasn't been quite so summery this past week, but just wait: "flaming June" is on the way this weekend.

How will you stay cool?  Why not spend time with art?  Studio visits with social distancing and a Zoom lecture are listed below.  Plus - write to me about your memories of the Met.

Studio Visits:

Here are two opportunities coming up this Saturday and next Saturday:

Saturday, June 5, from 10 am - 3 pm:

Clay Art Center Spring Fest!

Clay Art Center, 40 Beech Street,  Port Chester, NY.

(914)937-2047

Pottery for sale, outdoors.  

Raindate: June 12

100% of the revenues will support the Clay Art Center.  

Also on view: raku firings and pottery wheel demonstrations.

Saturday, June 12, 1 - 5 PM

Wilhelmina Obatola Grant-Cooper

Sistaah Open Studio 

part of the Northern Manhattan Arts Alliance Annual Uptown Arts Stroll

Masks and reservations required for social distancing.

Click on this link here to reserve your time slot

Award-winning artist and director of SISTAAH Wilhelmina Obatola Grant-Cooper invites you to her studio for a rare opportunity to see her artworks and meet the artist at the same time. (New York Arts Exchange members may remember Wilhelmina's work in the exhibitions Art Above the Sofa and Bosom Bodies)

Reservations are free and open to the public.

* * *

Zoom Lecture on Art:

Gerard Sekoto, The Proud Father, Manakedi Naky on Bernard Sekoto’s Knee, 1947

Thursday, June 17, 7 PM

"Fathers in Art," a slide lecture on Zoom

hosted by Byram Shubert Library, Greenwich, CT

Please register here

Beth Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D., lectures on the images of fathers in art history from Ancient Egypt to contemporary times.  One hour.  Free and open to the public, anywhere.

Memories of the Met:

Metropolitan Museum of Art, 1889, seen from

the Weston Wing

Metropolitan Museum of Art today

A bird's-eye view of the sculpture galleries

If you had been interviewed for this Met documentary, what would you say? 

PBS produced a three-part series "Inside the Met," which aired on May 21 and May 28. You can watch the documentary at this website address: Inside the Met

I would love to know what you thought of this series. 

Please share your reviews and your favorite memories of the Met through my email address: nyarts.exchange@verizon.net

Or post comments on our Facebook page (look for this blog post)

https://www.facebook.com/NYArts.Exchange/

Or respond directly to this email newsletter.

Thank you so much for any thoughts and memories you would like to share.

I'll be back soon with more info about artists and art, near and far.

Happy June!

Hugs,

Beth

Beth Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.

Director and owner

New York Arts Exchange

Studio Visit on Zoom with artist Wilhelmina Obatola Grant-Cooper hosted by Greenwich Arts Council - Free!

Wilhelmina Obatola Grant-Cooper 

Please join us for a Studio Visit with

artist Wilhelmina Obatola Grant-Cooper

hosted by Greenwich Arts Council

on 

Wednesday, March 10th at 7 pm

Registration is Free

Register here

Artist and art instructor Wilhelmina Obatola Grant-Cooper will welcome us to her studio via Zoom to share her artworks, process and story.  She is a cancer survivor, who discovered her artistic calling through healing.  We will have a powerpoint presentation followed by a Q and A. Beth Gersh-Nešić, director of the New York Arts Exchange, will conduct the interview

.

Wilhelmina Obatola Grant-Cooper in her studio

Ms. Grant-Cooper founded SISTAAH, Inc. (Survivors Inspiring Sisters Through Art and Advocacy for Health), an arts-based non-profit organization which seeks to inform, encourage and facilitate access to early detection of breast cancer by connecting the medically underserved to free screening services. Through SISTAAH, Inc.,  she also launched two successful grant-funded community art projects: Saving Our Sisters in the African American Community, and the Harlem Hand Fan Initiative.

Ms. Grant-Cooper creates assemblages using mixed-media and found objects which she repurposes into visual art.  Among her collectors are  Alice Walker, President Bill Clinton, Vy Higginson, Hoda Kotb, Hamilton Landmark Galleries, Heath Gallery and Universal Studios. 

Her memoir A Feeling of Fullness: Insights of a Divinely Guided Journey Beyond Breast Cancer (2016) is available on her website:  https://sistaah.org/

I look forward to seeing you on Zoom this Wednesday evening.

Happy International Women's Day,

Beth

Beth S. Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.

Director and owner

New York Arts Exchange

www.nyarts-exchange.com

 

 

Fall 2019 - Closings, Openings and Beth's Public Lectures

Amy Sherald, Sometimes the king is a woman, 2019

It's been a spectacular fall weather-wise and art-wise: The Museum of Modern Art reopened on Monday, October 21st, the Felix Vallotton will open this Monday, October 29th at the Met (closing January 26, 2020) and the elegant TEFAF  art fair will fill the Park Avenue Armory November 1st - 5th.

This weekend two exciting exhibitions will close:

Saturday, October 26th, Amy Sherald the heart of the matter, Hauser & Wirth, 548 West 22nd. St. 

(Ms. Sherald is best known for her portrait of Michelle Obama in the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC.) 

Alicja Kwade, Parapivot, 2019

Sunday, October 27th, Alicja Kwade, Parapivot, Metropolitan Museum of Art, roof installation

Also - IFPDA Fine Art Print Fair is still on at Jacob Javits Center, closing Sunday, October 27th.

Please join us at Beth's Public Lectures and Panels this fall:

Amadeo Modigliani, Portrait of Max Jacob, 1916

Monday, October 28th - "When Modern Art was 'Jewish': The Anti-Semitic Campaign Against Cubism and the School of Paris," Shames JCC, Tarrytown, 10 - 11:30 am.

 Ann Cefola   

   Ann Launger         

Beth Gersh-Nesic

Translation for Writers - Workshops

Saturday, November 2nd - "Translation for Writers," with poets Ann Cefola, Ann Lauinger and art historian Beth Gersh-Nesic at Desmond-Fish Library, Garrison, NY, 1:30-3 pm. 

Sunday, November 10th - Sunday Afternoon with George: "Translation for Writers," with poets Ann Cefola and Ann Lauinger and art historian Beth Gersh-Nesic at Shames JCC in Tarrytown, NY, 1:30 - 3:30 pm.

Georgia O'Keeffe, Blue and Green Music, 1919

Monday, November 4th - "American Women Artists," late 19th-20th century, Learning in Retirement, Temple Beth El, Stamford, CT, 1 - 3 pm.

Monday, November 11th - "20th Century European Women Artists," Learning in Retirement, Temple Beth El, Stamford, CT, 1 - 3 pm

Monday, December 9th - "Was André Salmon a Feminist?,"  André Salmon Colloquium, University of Turin, Turin, Italy.

More News:  The Launch of Za Mir Press

Our first publication is Professor Jacqueline Gojard's book Pablo Picasso and André Salmon: The Painter, the Poet and the Portraits (Za Mir Press, 2019), available on Amazon. 

As for  teaching art history, some of you know that I retired from Purchase College and joined the faculty of the College of New Rochelle last fall as an adjunct.  CNR closed in August and Mercy College, which took over CNR, hired me back.  I taught at Mercy on and off from 1994-2013.

Please keep in touch and let us know if you have exciting exhibitions, books or other events that you would like to announce through the New York Arts Exchange.  Write to Beth at nyarts.exchange@verizon.net

Happy Halloween!  Shanah Tovah!  

Hoping to see you this fall -

Beth 

Beth Gersh-Nesic, Ph.D.

Director and owner

New York Arts Exchange