Join Larry Silver (University of Pennsylvania) and Deirdre Hennebury (Michigan Museum Studies) as they discuss Too Jewish or Not Jewish Enough: Ritual Objects and Avant-Garde Art at the Jewish Museum of New York with author Jeffrey Abt (Frankel Institute). An exploration of the museum’s origins and early history, this book focuses on the period when it evolved from displaying Jewish ritual objects, to Jewish art, to avant-garde art devoid of Jewish content, created by non-Jews. Established within a rabbinic seminary, the museum’s story reflects changes in Jewish society over the twentieth century as it struggled to balance competing values of religion and secularism, particularism and universalism, and ethnic pride and assimilation.

Jeffrey Abt is a Professor Emeritus at Wayne State University. He earned BFA and MFA degrees in painting at Drake University, working primarily with Jules Kirschenbaum; and he subsequently studied at the Jerusalem campus of the Hebrew Union College-Jewish Institute of Religion. Prior to Wayne State, he worked at the Wichita Art Museum; the Special Collections Research Center, University of Chicago; and Chicago’s Smart Museum of Art. An artist and writer, he has exhibited widely in the United States and abroad; and his artwork is in several museum and corporate collections. His books include American Egyptologist: The Life of James Henry Breasted and the Creation of His Oriental Institute (University of Chicago Press), Valuing Detroit's Art Museum: A History of Fiscal Abandonment and Rescue (Palgrave Macmillan), and Too Jewish or Not Jewish Enough: Ritual Objects and Avant-Garde Art at the Jewish Museum of New York (Berghahn).