negotiating jewish identity through the display of art
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This article was downloaded by: [McMaster University]On: 04 November 2014, At: 08:15Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number:1072954 Registered office: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street,London W1T 3JH, UK
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Negotiating JewishIdentity through theDisplay of ArtKATHRIN PIERENPublished online: 31 May 2012.
To cite this article: KATHRIN PIEREN (2010) Negotiating Jewish Identitythrough the Display of Art, Jewish Culture and History, 12:1-2, 281-296, DOI:10.1080/1462169X.2010.10512155
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OUT OF THE GHETTO
Negotiating Jewish Identity through the Display of Art
KATHRIN PIEREN
Research on museums has proved useful in understanding the social dynamics of groups and societies and their use of material culture for the construction and reaffirmation of cultural identities. A comparison between two exhibitions of Jewish art and history taking place in London at the turn of the twentieth century reveals a gradual shift in the museological representation of Jewish identity from a focus on religion towards ethnicity. The inclusion of visitor perceptions and of unintentional and contradictory meanings of the exhibits, however, illustrates that these representations were not necessarily the outcome of a clear strategy and were socially contested.
An important focus of museum studies in the last 20 years has been to deconstruct the symbolic power of museums and art galleries. The role such institutions can play in constructing and reinforcing identities has been explored for various populations. 1 Studying exhibitions and museums therefore helps us to understand the social dynamics of specific collectivities. As the opening up of the princely collections to a mass public coincided with the birth of the nation state in Europe, it is of little surprise that the function of museums to construct national identities has been a particularly fruitful area of study. However, it has been shown that regional and local museums as well as museums established by cultural, ethnic, social or religious groups have similar roles. Moira Simpson's broad study shows that culturally specific (she calls them 'community-focused') museums frequently have at least a double purpose: to preserve cultural heritage and pass knowledge and skills to the in-group in an attempt to keep its identity vital on one hand, and to present its culture to the general public on the other, often in order to counter misconceptions held by the majority population and correct distortions in the way the minority is represented by mainstream institutions. 2 Among other roles, such duality of purpose has also been observed for Jewish museums in the diaspora.3
Jewish Culture and History, Vol.12, No.1&2 (Summer/Autumn 2010), pp.281-296 PUBLISHED BY VALLENTINE MITCHELL, LONDON
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The two exhibitions that are going to be discussed in this paper, the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition of 1887 and the Exhibition of Jewish Art and Antiquities of 1906, have attracted considerable scholarly interest. Past research has clearly shown that they had an important political and cultural function. To place Anglo-Jewry firmly within English society for fear of, and as a response to, anti-Semitism and marginalisation by the Gentile majority was shown as being a major driving force for the Anglo-Jewish establishment involved in both exhibitions.4
The present paper builds on this knowledge, but will look at the exhibitions from a slightly different angle. Comparing two seemingly very similar exhibitions and their reception by the press, I seek to show how the meaning of displays changes over time and what factors can influence museum representation. This will give an indication of the potential of museum studies research for the study of culture while at the same time highlighting the need for caution when drawing conclusions about socio-cultural dynamics from museum representations. In order to do that, I will briefly sketch how museum studies have approached the polysemy of museum exhibits.
Some Thoughts on Methodology
Undoubtedly, museums are made for public consumption, which makes their exhibits open for interpretation. Nevertheless, studies that critically examine the power of museums have often ignored audiences or implied that they read exhibitions in the way intended by their makers; this can be said for some of the above-mentioned studies.5
Conversely, the present case study is based on the more recently acknowledged role of museum visitors as 'active interpreters and performers of meaning-making practices'. 6 In this approach, which is supported by education and communication theory and builds on media and literary studies, meaning in museums is
not fixed within objects, images, historical resources, or cultural sites, but . . . produced out of the combination of the object/the image/the site itself, the mode of presentation, what is known about its history and production, and visitor interaction. 7
The negotiation of meaning depends on a variety of factors. From the visitors' point of view, for instance, it may hinge on their socio-cultural background, expectations and foreknowledge or the sequence in which they visit a display. What has been explored in recent visitor research studies has also been shown for displays in the past. 8 Kate Hill's
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research on municipal museums in the second half of the nineteenth century suggests that, although members of the working class did attend museums, they did not necessarily adopt the 'civilised' behaviour that these institutions aimed to inculcate.9 Moreover, Seth Koven found testimonies about working class visits to the picture exhibitions at St Jude's parish school, the precursor of the Whitechapel Art Gallery, which imply that these visitors interpreted the pictures in their own terms, at times challenging the ideological underpinnings of the philanthropic endeavour. 10 Assuming an active visitor role, however, does not imply a complete randomness of possible responses as meaning making takes place within specific socio-cultural contexts that make certain readings more likely than others. Furthermore, the relationship between the institutions that shape the exhibits and the visitors that interpret them is one of unequal power. This means that a display is never completely open to interpretation.11
To look at newspaper reviews in order to investigate perceptions and possible divergences from the intended exhibition narratives, as is suggested here, is clearly a poor substitute for personal accounts. Yet, in the absence of such testimonies, and if one abandons the idea that the press is representative of public opinion, they can be useful in two ways. If newspapers do not necessarily reflect their readers' opinions, exhibition reviews can nevertheless be expected to influence the readers' ways of perceiving an exhibition (which is their primary function). Maybe even more importantly, they provide an indicator of the range of possible readings beyond those preferred by the exhibition makers. Thereby they render the picture about the consumption of these displays more complete than if it were just assumed that the consumption of the exhibits exactly mirrored the intentions of their producers.
Starting from the actual exhibit and regarding its meaning as a negotiation process is part of an approach that treats museum displays as texts that can not only be read in multiple ways, but which also produce unintentional, ambivalent and contradictory meanings.12 A central element that is only going to be touched upon in this article but which is crucially influencing the meaning produced by a display is, of course, the collection itself and how it came into existence. A variety of contemporaneous and even conflicting motives, such as nostalgia, local or national pride, and economic interest, inform the nature of collections and sometimes they reflect the interests of only a handful of people, even if they are eventually used to represent a collectivity. 13
This implies that exhibitions do not necessarily (fully) reflect the values and attitudes of those who curate them. The curators might, on the
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other hand, have aims that are not reflected by the displays themselves and which risk being ignored by a textual approach. Whilst it could be argued that they are irrelevant for the response a display evokes, these 'unrealised' intentions are a key to understanding the motivation of those segments of a population who have the power to represent it in public in the first place.
The focus of the following case study will be on the change in the representation and consumption of art which is part of the Jewish art discourse that had started in the nineteenth century and was characterised by lively debates in the first quarter of the twentieth century in various national contexts. 14 The significance of these two exhibitions for this discourse and for the development of Jewish museums in Europe has been acknowledged by Richard Cohen and Dominique Jarrasse. 15 The scale and public dimension of the 1887 exhibition made it stand out in the history of Jewish collecting and museums, while the inclusion of Jewish contemporary artists in the 1906 event introduced the notion of a specific Jewish fine art which became an object of debate. Whilst Cohen and Jarrasse come to their conclusions from the wider perspective of international developments, I suggest going back to the displays in their local contexts to investigate how this change was effected through the interaction of objects, place and visitors. Knowledge of the local context within which these exhibitions were produced and consumed not only helps to understand that specific situation, but also provides a basis for effective comparison. Similar motivations and motifs were at work in the staging of exhibitions and the foundation of other Jewish museums in Europe; local, national and transnational approaches are therefore complementing, rather than competing with, each other. Insofar as London would for years to come remain the only British city with significant temporary and permanent displays of Jewish art and history which, however, claimed to be representative of British Jewry and were widely presented as such by the press, their significance in fact went well beyond the local context.
The 1887 Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition
Isidore Spielmann, an engineer who would later become a major art impresario in Britain's international exhibitions, initiated the AngloJewish Historical Exhibition at the Royal Albert Hall in honour of Queen Victoria's Golden Jubilee. Whilst being part of a longer-term strategy to counter growing anti-alienism and anti-Sernitism16 that had started to bubble up once more with the arrival of large numbers of
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Eastern European immigrants, 17 the organisers also attempted to reclaim and popularise Anglo-Jewish history in view of a perceived diminution in community cohesion. 18 The legacy of the exhibition was the Jewish Historical Society of England set up by the core members of the organising team in 18 9 3. 19
The exhibition was realised with the help of an over 1 00-people strong exhibition committee and it was complemented by exhibitions at the South Kensington Museum, the British Museum and the Public Record Office. The over 2,500 objects on display encompassed: historic relics and records; Jewish ceremonial art; antiquities; coins and medals; and portraits of Anglo-Jewish personalities. 20 The narrative put weight on the political history of the Jews in Britain and their longstanding and successful integration into the majority society. Only very few references were made to poor Jews living in the East End of London, and conflicts within the Jewish population or between them and non-Jews were located in the distant past.21 Parallel to this patriotic account, the prominent exhibition of antiquities told a story of the spiritual and historical connectedness of Anglo-Jewry with the ancient world and thus, indirectly, with the diaspora. Not all of this was the result of a clearly defined strategy, notably Spielmann had at first not intended to include any religious or archaeological items. 22
There is also evidence to show that the various personalities involved had their own agendas for this exhibition, some more interested in professionalising Anglo-Jewish history, others more concerned with decorum and the good reputation of British Jewry in the eyes of the Gentiles. 23
Most popular with the public was the art on display. The term does not refer to the portraits of rabbis, boxers and communal leaders, which were considered part of the historical exhibits, but to religious objects. The Torah scrolls, menorahs, Kiddush cups, spice boxes, and other ceremonial items offered themselves for two readings. Divided up in three departments according to the place of worship ('synagogue', 'home' and 'personal'), the layout of the objects and the description of their religious use in the catalogue integrated them in their ritual context. However, in the introductory chapter the catalogue referred to them explicitly as ('ecclesiastical') art. 24
Furthermore, the objects were exhibited in a highly aestheticised manner (in the display the classification was partly broken up and the precious metal objects were exhibited against a dark background, often arranged to form a symmetrical pattern25
) which emphasised their artistic qualities. The absence of text in the exhibition space (it all had to be looked up in the catalogue which not every visitor possessed)
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made the aesthetic reading of the exhibit rather more probable than the religious one, although this must have been different for Jewish and Gentile audiences. The Jewish World, for instance, acknowledged the power of the exhibition to instil pride and evoke personal memories in Jewish visitors. 26
The focus on art was not accidental, but a strategy to attract visitors who were expected to be charmed by the 'artistic beauty' of these objects in a predominandy historical display that was not considered sufficiently appealing on its own. 27 Importandy, the press replicated the aesthetic interpretation of the objects. The Times, for example, praised 'the richly embroidered mantles, crowned with nests of tinkling silver bells' and referred to the religious appurtenances as 'the art collection'.28 The Jewish Chronicle, moreover, stated that '[i]t will come, we fancy, as a surprise, and to most as a pleasant surprise, to find that the Exhibition is in so large a degree an art exhibition'.29 The successful display of all those art objects even brought the chairman of the committee to express his hope that the exhibition had stimulated the development of Jewish ritual art. 30 Whilst the show itself demonstrated the existence and beauty of Jewish art, belying the prejudice that Jews could not be creative (purported in the nineteenth century by people such as Richard Wagner in Das Judenthum in der Musik31
), the catalogue text delivered an apology for the assumed lack of a specifically Jewish art, stressing that these objects were produced in the style of the countries Jews lived in. The Judaica therefore added the double story of a community unified by common religious traditions and distinguished by its artistic achievements; the framework of reference was the nation.
With over 12,000 visitors (most likely members of the middle and upper classes although four free Saturdays and subsidised school visits from Jewish schools also targeted poorer audiences) the paying exhibition was considered a success. 32 It was well received by the Jewish and mainstream press which mosdy shared the interpretations of the organisers, emphasising the elegance of the opening event, praising the interest of the objects and their great appeal to various audiences.33 Nevertheless, some mainstream newspapers assumed Jewish difference on the basis of the ancient origins of Judaism when they referred to Jews as 'the Chosen People',34 'the Old Testament'35
and 'the Hebrew race'.36 This was even more explicit in the reviews of the Daily Telegraph37 and the Pall Mall Gazette, for whose authors the representation of Jews as English, while having a connection with the Holy Land, seems to have worked as a marker of difference. In an orientalising manner and despite the fact that the vast majority of the
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exhibits referred to Anglo-Jewish history, the Pall Mall Gazette located Jewish culture in a space outside the national context when suggesting that the exhibition would be particularly instructive and interesting 'to those interested in Oriental customs, art, races and religion'. 38 Clearly the identity discourse underlying this judgement did not accommodate the complex identity presented in the exhibition; rather, the display of 'exotic' objects seems to have turned the subject of the exhibition, Anglo-Jewry, into 'exotica' themselves.
The 1906 Exhibition of Jewish Art and Antiquities
Several of the organisers of the 1887 exhibition were involved in the 1906 Exhibition of Jewish Art and Antiquities at the Whitechapel Art Gallery. It was modelled upon the earlier display and initiated by a member of the former exhibition committee, Canon Samuel Barnett, the founder of the university settlement 'Toynbee Hall' in the East End of London. 39 Barnett was an early honorary member of the Maccabaeans, a club of Jewish professionals who aimed to promote a Jewish secular culture, and when he and his wife had founded the gallery in 1901 he had received the financial and moral support of the Anglo-Jewish establishment.40
In the moralising tradition of the gallery,41 the lofty goal of the 1906 event was to uplift the spirits of the poor and Barnett was also convinced that it would create 'a link between the East and the West, between Jews and Gentiles'.42 This was timely as the Jewish immigrants that had been settling from the 1880s onwards in increasing numbers in the notoriously poor and overcrowded Jewish East End had become the object of growing hostility from the local population, eventually leading up to the 1905 Aliens Act.43 Whilst countering Gentile prejudices44 had already been an aim in the 1887 exhibition, this time the jewish World commented that
East joins West, in more senses than one. For not only do all sections of the community, from the highest to the humblest, meet, as it were, upon a common platform where all are of equal standing, but the art of the Orient is wedded to that of our Western surroundings. 45
Although displaying the same object categories, the exhibition was more modest than the earlier one. It also focused less on emancipation history, a central story in the previous display, and presented fewer archaeological artefacts. 46 Instead, the choice of objects and the way they were shown in a mass display (probably the result of spatial
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constraints), scarcely commented upon in the catalogue and lacking an easy to distinguish display logic which neglected provenance or function, stressed the commonality of Jewish experience in Britain and beyond. For example, one case contained, inter alia, a German Memorbuch, an Egyptian prayer book, an Italian doctor's prescription book and the Romance of Nizami in Hebrew-Persian. 47 This was partly the effect of the eclectic book collections on loan from private collectors that were displayed under the lenders' names rather than thematically. English history was still a strong element in the exhibition, but the accent of the narrative had shifted from 'AngloJewish' to 'Jewish', as the title implied.
This was reinforced by the most important innovation of the exhibition, the display of works by British and foreign artists. Whilst in 1887 it had been up to the ceremonial art to demonstrate Jewish artistic achievement, this function was now transferred onto the works by contemporary artists and artists from the recent past such as Solomon J. Solomon, Max Liebermann, Simeon Solomon and Jozef Israels. The catalogue's text on Jewish art was published not under 'ecclesiastical art', but under the new title of 'Jewish art'.48 The religious appurtenances, on the other hand, were restored to their ritual interpretation in the catalogue (where they were still termed 'ecclesiastical art') and by a more religiously contextualised display (as the few available pictures seem to indicate). By exhibiting the works of different styles, media, subject matter and provenance under the common heading of 'Jewish art', the exhibition presented visitors with the concept of Jewish art as art produced by Jews. However, this ethnic dimension was contested even in the interpretation of the exhibition itself as well as in the reception by the press. The author of the catalogue, prominent art critic and brother of Isidore Spielmann, Marion Harry Spielmann, who also reviewed the exhibition in the Jewish World and The Graphic, presented Jewish art again in the national context of its production, arguing that, although some artists might choose to paint Jewish subjects with a particular passion, their art was no different from the art of the countries they lived in.49 To contribute to the glory of the English school, he was convinced, was the natural course and aim of the Jewish artistic production in Britain, thereby aspiring to aesthetic assimilation. Conversely, for Haham Moses Gaster, another member of the exhibition committee in 1887 and in 1906 and an early Zionist, Jewish and English art were not mutually exclusive categories as each indicated a specific 'spirit' added to an assembly of traditions inherited from various places and times. To him, the exhibition clearly showed the 'unity of the Jewish race'. 5°
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The jewish Chronicle held yet another concept of Jewish art, basing it on iconography. While discussing foreign and English artists separately, it focused on the difference between 'Jewish pictures' and pictures 'of no Jewish interest' according to subject matter, identifying the emergence of a 'new Jewish school' in Britain whose works it regarded as revealing the Jewish soul. This school would encompass representations of 'the alien at worship and study' and possibly scenes of persecution and suffering.51 By including in its definition of Jewish art paintings from artists such as Moses Maimon and Leopold Pilichowski, which were inspired by contemporary events in Russia and Eastern Europe, the paper reinforced the idea of a common Jewish identity beyond the religious sphere. 52
Other newspapers picked up the narrative of the exhibition makers, not discussing Spielmann's concept of Jewish art, but acknowledging the achievements of Jews in the arts. 53 With over 150,000 visitors and more than 20,000 catalogues sold, the free exhibition was the best attended six-week exhibition since the gallery had first opened. 54 Whilst the local people were enthusiastic visitors/5 they also 'rub[bed] shoulders with Gentile pilgrims from the West'.56 Mainstream papers praised religious objects as well as fine art for their aesthetic qualities, but distinguished between ancient and modern Jewry. For the Daily News the ancient origins of Jewish traditions and their continuing relevance in the present held a particular fascination and they might have been the reason for its perception of mystery pervading the East End; the history of the 'ancient race' contrasted with the 'versatility of the modern Jew' who was seen as producing mostly art with no distinctive Jewish character.57 Spielmann argued along the same lines, but was more explicit in establishing a direct link between Jewish communities and specific art forms. He identified contemporary fine art with universal values and modernity while associating 'art objects', the Judaica - 'important beyond all to the Jewish denizens of the East End' - with parochialism and premodernity. 58 It seems that by trying to bridge the gaps between the various Jewish and Gentile communities, the exhibition suggested an idea of Jewish ethnic identity that provoked new constructions of difference. While this appears to be indicative of the prejudices and ambivalences towards Jewish immigrants held in middle and upper class circles, it also points towards the tensions that can potentially arise for minority groups in exhibitions between representing themselves positively as a coherent group to a mainstream audience and reflecting the group's diversity and inner divisions to its members.5
'
Juliet Steyn has righdy observed that the exhibition invited the local immigrant population 'to become spectators of a culture already
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complete', the Western European culture, despite the fact that various notions of Jewish identity were competing with each other. 60 Indeed, an article on 'Di kulturele entwiklung fun di yiden in england' ('The cultural development of the Jews in England'), published a few days after the exhibition's opening, in Der yidisher ekspres, illustrates that some immigrants had a rather different outlook on these issues.61 Unlike Spielmann, the author did not regard specific Jewish culture as antiquated, but as something generally lively and thriving. Not so in Britain, however, where he could not identify any culture with a lasting value which also bore 'dem yidishen shtempel' ('the Jewish stamp'), such as literature in Yiddish. The author blamed this on the fragmentation of the Jewish population: in the struggle for survival recent and more settled immigrants had no time to dedicate themselves to the arts, and native Jews ('geshefts-leyt un aristokraten' - 'businesspeople' and 'aristocrats'), because of their liberty and comfortable life in England, 'lieben alzding wos es is english, fun] sey hasen, oder sey seynen wenigstens gleychgiltig zu ales wos es is yidish' ('love everything English [and] hate, or are at least indifferent, towards anything Jewish'). Although his was the voice from a disempowered segment of the Jewish population, it is doubtful whether this journalist was passively enduring the educational zeal of the likes of Canon Barnett and Marion Harry Spielmann.
Conclusions
With regard to the Jewish communities of London and, by implication, Britain the start of two interrelated shifts can be discerned in the representation of Jewish art between the two displays of 1887 and 1906: the first shift goes from religious and decorative to profane and fine art. This happens at a time when the production of works of fine art by Jews becomes more visible and its specific character is publicly debated. It ties in with what Dominique Jarrasse formulated for the Jewish art discourse in Europe in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century: the gradual change from a religious to an ethnic conception of Jewish art. But while he suggests that, albeit the Exhibition of Jewish Art and Antiquities marks a turning point, the actual change takes place only in the Zionist context in Berlin where an 'Exhibition of Jewish Artists' was shown the year after/2 I would argue that in the London context the shift in focus is clearly discernible between the two events even though the concept of Jewish art as ethnic was socially still contested. What the case study shows well is the gradual change in the interpretation of exhibits and the negotiated character of museum representation between various stakeholders.
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The change in the art discourse relates to the second shift in the representation of Jews from a community characterised by common religious traditions, a spiritual connection with Ancient Israel and a strong attachment to England towards their representation as a transnational ethnic group (that shares inter alia a common religion). However, this does not necessarily reflect a cultural shift from a predominandy religious concept of Jewishness to an exclusively ethnic consciousness, let alone a consensus of a common culture among British Jewry. Indeed, the narratives produced by the artistic displays were influenced by museum-specific factors such as the availability of collections, spatial constraints and target audiences. Had the AngloJewish Historical Exhibition not included archaeological or ritual objects, as originally planned, for example, it would have conveyed a rather different idea of Jewish identity. Furthermore, the intentions expressed by the organisers and the articles in the press in 1906 contain references to the well-known social and cultural divide between recent immigrants and the British Jewish middle and upper classes, and testify to the ambivalence of the latter between communal solidarity and differentiation with the immigrant population. While reviewing the displays and discussing art, these texts reproduce the claims over the definition of Jewish culture from exponents of various segments of the Jewish population who used stereotyped attributes to exclude each other from cultural entitlement, thereby reinforcing the cultural divide.
Interesting is the frequent use by organisers and stakeholders of the shorthand 'East' and 'West End' to indicate all kinds of socio-cultural difference. If the stereotypical representation of the East End was common in late nineteenth and early twentieth century London, in the reception of the Whitechapel exhibition the East-West metaphor was entangled with the nineteenth century Hellenism-Hebraism debate and references to the oriental origins of Judaism. Particularly in the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition the reference to antiquity and the bible held an appeal to Gentile visitors (something the jewish Chronicle was aware of and the organisers might well have been), but the mainstream press equally used it as the marker of Jewish difference in the present.63 Whilst in 1887 some papers had opposed Jewishness to Gentile Englishness, in 1906 the 'other' was the Jewish immigrant who was seen as representing Jewish tradition and, in its negative conception, backwardness as opposed to modern European Jewry.
With regard to the representation of Jewish identity through the display of art in London exhibitions, it will take the passage of time, the strengthening of the immigrant communities, the establishment of
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Zionism, and changes in the general art discourse and production to consolidate the above changes, but we can already spot the beginnings of a diversification in the negotiation of Jewish identity in the public sphere.
I hope this brief case study has provided an idea of the different factors that inform material culture displays and demonstrated that they do not necessarily reflect a clear strategy of the curators. To capture underlying, contradictory and implicit messages and to include reception can help an understanding of the complexity of meanings produced by exhibitions and to place them in their broader cultural context. Yet it would be wrong to think that 'anything goes'. As the sources in this particular case illustrate, the press generally reproduced the narratives fostered by the displays in largely similar ways, although there are a series of significant contestations that testify to the breadth of possible responses and illustrate the negotiated character of museum representations.
For the purpose of demonstrating the use of museum studies for the understanding of social relations and the construction of identity within the public sphere I have focused exclusively on the way art was represented and received in two temporary exhibitions. The limitations of this approach are obvious and need not be expanded upon. It is understood that these events were part of a wider cultural field and a set of competing and overlapping discourses on identity, art, citizenship etc. However, the pioneering character of these displays and their strong presence in the press gave them a visibility beyond London and had a lasting impact on subsequent Jewish selfrepresentations in Britain and elsewhere. The changes in the displays and the discussions that ensued are therefore more important than the cases themselves might initially indicate.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
The research for this article was made possible thanks to a Collaborative Doctoral Award granted by the Arts and Humanities Research Council, as well as the support of the Institute of Historical Research and the Museum of London. I would like to thank the following friends and colleagues whose comments have helped me improve my text: John Clifford, Hannah Ewence, lily Kahn, Derek Keene, Ed Marshall, Rhiannon Mason, James Moore, Andrew Newman.
NOTES
1. To mention a few well-known landmark studies: Ivan Karp and Steven D. Lavine, eds., Exhibiting Cultures: The Poetics and Politics of Museum Display (Washington and London: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991); Ivan Karp et a/., eds., Museums and Communities: The Politics of Public Culture (Washington and London: Smithsonian
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Institution Press, 1992); Tony Bennett, The Birth of the Museum: History, Theory, Politics (London: Routledge, 1995); Carol Duncan, Civilizing IUtuals: Inside Public Art Museums (London and New York: Routledge, 1995); Sharon Macdonald and Gordon Fyfe, eds., Theorizing Museums: Representing Identity and Diversity in a Changing World (Oxford: Blackwell; Cambridge, MA: Sociological Review, 1996). While the present article focuses on museums, the same trend can be observed in the study of cultural heritage in general: The Ashgate Research Companion to Heritage and Identity ed. by Brian Graham and Peter Howard (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2008).
2. Moira G. Simpson, Making Representations: Museums in the Post-Colonial Era (London and New York: Routledge, 1996).
3. Among the more recent publications that discuss the specific functions of Jewish museums and their relation to Jewish identity discourses in various time periods and places are: David Clark, 'Jewish Museums and Jewish Renewal', in New Voices in Jewish Thought ed. by Keith Harris, Vol.2 (London: Limmud Publications, 1999), pp.70-91; Rickie Burman, 'Presenting Judaism', in Godly Things: Museums, Objects and Religion ed. by Crispin Paine (London and New York: Leicester University Press, 2000), pp.132-42; Katharina Rauschenberger,Jiidische Tradition im Kaiserreich und in der Weimarer Republik, Zur Geschichte des jiidischen Museumswesens in Deutschland (Hannover: Verlag Hahnsche Buchhandlung, 2002); Klaus Hod!, 'The Turning to History of Viennese Jews: Jewish Identity and the Jewish Museum',Joumal of Modem Jewish Studies, 3.1 (March 2004), 17-32.
4. For the 1887 exhibition see David Cesarani, 'Dual Heritage or Duel of Heritages? Englishness and Jewishness in the Heritage Industry', in The Jewish Heritage in British History: Englishness and Jewishness ed. by Tony Kushner (London/Portland, OR: Frank Cass, 1992), pp.29-41 and in the same collection Tony Kushner, 'The End of the "Anglo-Jewish Progress Show": Representations of the Jewish East End, 1887-1987', pp.78-105; Jeffrey David Feldman, 'Exhibiting Judaica or Jewish Exhibitionism: A Comparison of Two Nineteenth-Century Exhibitions' (unpublished M.Phil. thesis, St Cross College, Oxford University, 1993. MS. M.Phil. c.1510); Michael E. Keen, 'Die "Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition" und die Judaicasammlung des Victoria & Albert Museums', in Wiener Jahrbuch fur Judische Geschichte Kultur & Museumswesen Band 1 1994/1995 (Wien: Verlag Christian Brandstiitter), pp.71-87; Peter Stansky, 'AngloJew or English/British? Some Dilemmas of Anglo-Jewish History', Jewish Social Studies, 2.1 (Fall1995), 159-78; Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, 'Exhibiting Jews', in Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums and Heritage (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1998; first published in 1992 under the title 'From Cult to Culture: Jews on Display at World's Fairs'), pp.79-128. For the 1906 exhibition see Juliet Steyn, 'The Complexities of Assimilation in the 1906 Whitechapel Art Gallery Exhibition "Jewish Art and Antiquities'", Oxford Art Journal, 13.2 (1990), 44-50. Richard Cohen and Dominique Jarrasse included both exhibitions in their international surveys. Richard I. Cohen, Jewish Icons: Art and Society in Modern Europe (Berkeley and London: University of California Press, 1998); Dominique Jarrasse, Existe-t-il un art juif? (Paris: Biro editeur, 2006). To be fair, the more recent studies have taken a wider stance on these exhibitions, pointing out that the Englishness represented coincided with references to transnational Jewish identities in the 1887 exhibition and suggesting that the 1906 exhibition was more inclusive towards the immigrant communities than had previously been thought. However, there is a basic consensus concerning the role of the exhibition for the construction of Englishness in a situation of exclusion. Peter Gross, 'Representations of Jews and Jewishness in English Painting, 1887-1914' (unpublished PhD Thesis, University of Leeds 2004. BL Theses GRO); Tobias Metzler, 'Jewish History in the Showcase', Museological Review, 12 (2007), pp.101-11; Irit Miller, 'Anglo-Jewish Exhibitions at the Turn of the 20th Century: Integration and Separatism', Iyunim Bitkumat Israel: Studies in Zionism, the Yishuv and the State of Israel, Vol.18 (Sede Boqer: Ben-Gurion Research Institute, 2008), pp.389-416 (Hebrew).
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5. Rhiannon Mason makes a similar point about 'cultural theory-inspired museum critiques'. Rhiannon Mason, 'Cultural Theory and Museum Studies', in A Companion to Museum Studies ed. by Sharon Macdonald (Malden, MA and Oxford: Blackwell Publishing, 2006), pp.17-32 (pp.25-6).
6. Eilean Hooper-Greenhill, 'Studying Visitors', in A Companion to Museum Studies (see note 5), pp.362-76 (p.362).
7. Rhiannon Mason, 'Museums, Galleries and Heritage: Sites of Meaning-Making and Communication', in Heritage, Museums and Galleries: An Introductory Reader ed. by Gerard Corsane (London and New York: Routledge, 2005), pp.200-214 (p.203). An illustrative example is Diana L. Linden's study about the display of Ben Shahn's late work at the Jewish Museum in New York and at the Detroit Institute of Arts in which she demonstrates that audience expectations and the museological context in which the artwork was shown impacted radically on its perception as being primarily the expression of a 'Jewish' rather than a 'modem American' artist in spite of the Jewish Museum's original intentions. Diana L. Linden, 'Modem? American? Jew? Museums and Exhibitions of Ben Shahn's Late Paintings', in The Art of Being Jewish in Modern Times ed. by Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Jonathan Karp (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), pp.197-207.
8. Studies that explore the variety of possible readings of museum displays using various methodologies are, for instance: Bella Dicks, Heritage, Place and Community (Cardiff: University of Wales Press, 2000); Gaynor Bagnall, 'Performance and Performativity at Heritage Sites', Museum and Society, 1.2 (2003), 87-103, http://www.le.ac.uk/ms/ museumsociety.html (accessed 15 January 2008); Richard Sandell, Museums, Prejudice and the Reframing of Difference (London and New York: Routledge, 2007). With regard to a Jewish museum, see Kathrin Pieren, '"Being Jewish Is More than the Holocaust Experience": What Visitors See at the Jewish Museum Berlin', Social History in Museums, 29 (2004), 79-86.
9. Kate Hill, Culture and Class in English Public Museums, 1850-1914 (Aldershot: Ashgate, 2005), chapter 7, pp.125-42.
10. Seth Koven, 'The Whitechapel Picture Exhibitions and the Politics of Seeing', in Museum Culture: Histories, Discourses, Spectacles ed. by Daniel J. Sherman and Irit Rogoff (London: Routledge, 1994), pp.22-48.
11. For a discussion on the changing notions of the power balance between the media on one side and consumers on the other, on which I base this observation, see David Morley, 'Theories of Consumption in Media Studies', in Acknowledging Consumption: A Review of New Studies ed. by David Miller (London and New York: Routledge, 1995), pp.296-328.
12. Mason (see note 5), pp.26-9. 13. An example of a public museum whose early collecting policy was mainly informed by
the cultural and political interests of one person against the aesthetic trends of the time was the Harris Library, Museum and Art Gallery in Preston. James R. Moore, 'Periclean Preston, Public Art and the Classical Tradition in Late-Nineteenth-Century Lancashire', Northern History, XL.2 (September 2003), 299-323.
14. Jarrasse (see note 4). 15. Cohen (see note 4), pp.197-8; Jarrasse (see note 4), pp.48-50. 16. Cesarani (see note 4). 17. Geoffrey Alderman, Modem British Jewry (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1998),
pp.ll0-32. 18. Cohen (see note 4), pp.193-4. On the importance of Anglo-Jewish history for
community-building see: Jewish World, 8 April 1887, pp.5-6 (which refers to the exhibition); Jewish Chronicle, 17 June 1887, pp.6-7; Lucien Wolf,~ Plea for AngloJewish History', Presidential Address, 11 November 1893, Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, 1 (1893-94), 1-7 (p.7); Sir Isidore Spielmann, 'Presidential Address to the Jewish Historical Society of England', 9 February 1903, Transaaions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, 5 (1902-5), 43-56 (pp.55-6).
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19. Lucien Wolf, 'Origins of the Jewish Historical Society of England', Presidential Address, 15 January 1912, Transactions of the Jewish Historical Society of England, 7 (1911-14), 206-15.
20. Catalogue of the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition, Royal Albert Hall, London, 1887, compiled by Joseph Jacobs and Lucien Wolf, illustrated by Frank Haes, Publications of the Exhibition Committee No.IV (London: F. Haes, 1888).
21. With its Whiggish oudook on history, sanitised picture of British tolerance and the emphasis on Jewish decorum, the exhibition has been seen as part of an apologetic tradition in Anglo-Jewish historiography that continued far into the twentieth century. Cesarani (see note 4); Kushner (see note 4); Stansky (see note 4).
22. Catalogue of the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition (see note 20), p.xxv. 23. My Ph.D. thesis contains a detailed account of the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition
and the early history of the Jewish Historical Society of England. 24. Catalogue of the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition (see note 20), p.83. 25. I am grateful to Dr Eva Frojmovic for pointing this out to me. 26. Jewish World, 8 April 1887, p.5. 27. Frederic David Mocatta, 'Report to the Members of the General Committee',
Catalogue of the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition (see note 20), p.207. 28. Times, 6 April, 1887, p.4. 29. Jewish Chronicle, 1 April1887, p.8. 30. Mocatta (see note 27), p.213. 31. Jarrasse (see note 4), pp.60-61. 32. Mocatta (see note 27), p.210-11. 33. The following newspapers were included in the analysis: Der arbeter fraynd, The
Builder, Times, Pall Mall Gazette, Daily News, Daily Telegraph, East End News, East London Observer, Evening News, Evening Standard, The Graphic, Illustrated London News, Jewish Chronide, Jewish World, Life, Lloyd's Weekly Newspaper, Manchester Guardian, Morning Post, Museums Journal, News of the World, Penny Illustrated Paper, Punch, People, Pictorial World, Tribune, Westminster and Lambeth Gazette. The majority of these papers did refer to the exhibition, although some with only a few lines or just advertising the event.
34. The Graphic, 9 April1887, p.375. 35. Apparendy a remark overheard by the journalist during the opening event. The People,
10 April1887, p.13. 36. Daily News, 4 April 1887, p.4. 37. Daily Telegraph, 4 April1887, p.3. 38. Pall Mall Gazette, 5 May 1887, p.11. 39. In a letter to Solomon J. Solomon dated 23 May [1905], Canon Barnett had suggested
an exhibition 'illustrating Jewish history, life and art' to be held in the Whitechapel Art Gallery. Minutes of the meeting of the Jewish Exhibition Committee, 22 October 1905. Archive of the Whitechapel Art Gallery. I am grateful to Rachel Dickson for providing me with a copy of this document.
40. Jewish Chronicle, 15 March 1901, p.14. 41. Koven (see note 10); Steyn (see note 4), p.44. 42. Quoted in Supplement to the Jewish Chronicle, 9 November 1906, p.ii. 43. According to Geoffrey Alderman, London's Jewish population had grown from about
46,000 on the eve of the Russian pogroms to about 135,000 in 1900. It was estimated in 1899 that roughly 120,000 Jews lived in the East End. Alderman (see note 17), pp.117-18.
44. To counter anti-alien prejudice, the exhibition committee initially suggested that the industrial and commercial contribution of the immigrants to the British economy should be shown by displaying handiwork or statistics. This idea does not appear to have been realised for reasons unknown to the present author. Minutes of the Meeting of the Jewish Exhibition Committee (see note 39), 22 October 1905 and 5 March 1906.
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45. Jewish World, 9 November 1906, p.560. 46. Whitechapel Art Gallery, Exhibition of Jewish Art and Antiquities, 7 November to 12
December 1906, Noon to 10 p.m. Apart from displaying fewer relevant objects, the catalogue did not contain anything like the several pages-long text on the history of British Jewry contained in the catalogue of 1887. Catalogue of the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition (see note 20), pp.1-7. The strong presence of archaeological artefacts in 1887 had been due to the involvement of representatives of prominent archaeological societies on the exhibition committee.
47. Whitechapel Art Gallery (see note 46), pp.33-4. 48. Ibid. pp.84-5; Catalogue of the Anglo-Jewish Historical Exhibition (see note 20), 83-4. 49. Whitechapel Art Gallery (see note 46), p.85; Jewish World, 7 December 1906,
pp.650-51. 50. Jewish World, 7 December 1906, p.647. 51. Supplement to the Jewish Chronicle, 9 November 1906, pp.iii-v (p.iv). 52. Cohen (see note 4), chapter 6. 53. The following newspapers were included in the analysis: Der arbeter fraynd, Daily
News, Daily Telegraph, Dibre hayomim, East End News and London Shipping Chronicle, East London Observer, Jewish Chronicle, Jewish World, The Graphic, Der yidisher zhournal, Der yidisher wechentlicher zhournal, Illustrated London News, Museums Journal, Pall Mall Gazette, Times, Der yidisher ekspres. Ten of these 16 papers reported on the exhibition. Exceptions were Pall Mall Gazette, Illustrated London News and the Yiddish papers other than Der yidisher zhournal.
54. University College London, Special Collections, Mocatta Boxed Pamphlets BA 6WHI. Whitechapel Art Gallery Report, 1906, p.9.
55. C. Campbell Ross quoted in Jewish World, 7 December 1906, p.647. 56. Marion Harry Spielmann in The Graphic, 24 November 1906, p.692. 57. Daily News, 7 November 1906, p.12. 58. The Graphic, 24 November 1906, p. 692 (emphasis added). 59. On the basis of the double function of many minority museums discussed above I apply
here to those museums in general what Rickie Burman has observed for museums established by religious minority groups (see note 3), p.136.
60. Steyn (note 4), p.50. 61. Der yidisher ekspres, 14 November 1906, p.3 (translation K.P.). 62. Jarrasse (see note 4), p.50. 63. '"For the great mass of men and women in this country anything biblical has a charm
which nothing can lessen or destroy": Supplement to the Jewish Chronicle', 8 April 1887, p.2.
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