CU Art Museum's Through Soviet Jewish Eyes is getting lots of looks in NYC

The University of Colorado may not be able to win a football game, but the CU Art Museum has scored big with its traveling exhibition, "Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust." The show, which debuted in Boulder in September, was curated by David Shneer, CU professor of...

By Patricia Calhoun

November 27, 2012

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The University of Colorado may not be able to win a football game, but the CU Art Museum has scored big with its traveling exhibition, "Through Soviet Jewish Eyes: Photography, War, and the Holocaust." The show, which debuted in Boulder in September, was curated by David Shneer, CU professor of history, and Lisa Tamiris Becker, director of the CU Art Museum; it was based on Shneer's book, Through Soviet Jewish Eyes. See also: - Korean artists keep it real at the CU Art Museum - Museum studies: The CU Art Museum is part of a museum-building boom

The exhibit includes 58 photographs by Soviet photojournalists, pictures that span the Nazi-Soviet war -- from June 22, 1941 to V-Day on May 9, 1945. "Canonical images appear side by side with photographs that have never before exhibited, which the curators found in private collections of the photographers' archives," the CU Art Museum site explains. "We also show that a large number of Soviet photographers were Jewish and ask what this might have meant when confronting the war and Nazi atrocities through Soviet and Jewish eyes."

And the show, which opened November 16 at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City, has already gotten raves (although CU's role in the exhibit hasn't rated a mention). The New York Times highlighted it as an arts pick last week; Time features eleven images and a lengthy piece in the Lightbox section of its online edition. Read "World War II through Soviet Jewish Eyes" here.

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Patricia Calhoun is editor-in-chief of Westword, the alt-weekly she co-founded in September 1977. She’s been inducted into the Colorado Press Association Hall of Fame, the Association of Alternative Newsmedia Hall of Fame and the Colorado Restaurant Association Hall of Fame. She’s also received dozens of local, state and national awards for writing, including first place for feature writing and first place for column writing with the Society of Professional Journalists. Patricia is a weekly commentator on Colorado Inside Out, PBS 12's public affairs roundtable, which has won two Emmys.

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