Mother Economy: A Film By Maya Zack Opens At The Jewish Museum On July 1, 2008

MOTHER ECONOMY: A FILM BY MAYA ZACK OPENS AT THE JEWISH MUSEUM ON JULY 1

New York, NY – The Jewish Museum will present Mother Economy: A Film by Maya Zack from July 1 to October 23, 2008 in the Museum’s Barbara and E. Robert Goodkind Media Center.  This 19 minute film (2007) is a meditation on Holocaust remembrance and an homage to the resourcefulness of Jewish women.

        In Mother Economy, a homemaker (portrayed by Idit Neuderfer) wearing glasses and a lace-collared blouse, her hair neatly arranged in a bun, maintains order and composure by performing household rituals with scientific precision.  Efficient and focused, the woman locates and identifies objects belonging to absent family members while radio broadcasts in the background suggest war, destruction, and chaos outside her controlled domestic space.  Using a marker, she traces a tennis racquet, cigarette ash, pocket change, and other personal artifacts on paper covering the walls and floors.  The paper is pink, a color associated with financial newspapers and femininity.  She proceeds to catalog objects before her.  Using formulas from a notebook and an abacus, she bakes a round kugel (noodle pudding) which is cut to resemble an economic pie chart.

        Both the artist and the fictional character struggle to make sense of personal and collective trauma when information is scarce.  Zack’s film was strongly influenced by a visit to her grandmother’s former house in Kosice, a city in present-day Slovakia.  Unable to enter the house, Zack tried to imagine the interiors – both present and past.  For the film’s set, Zack incorporates period clothing and furniture, but it remains an incomplete sketch of the past.

        Filmmaker and sculptor Maya Zack (Israeli, b. 1976) lives and works in Tel Aviv.  Her work has been exhibited at the Noga Gallery of Contemporary Art (Tel Aviv), Altneuland Gallery (Berlin), The Israel Museum, The Haifa Museum of Art, The Tel Aviv Museum of Art, and the 4th Gwangju Biennale in Korea.  In 2008 Zack was awarded Germany’s Celeste Art Prize for Mother Economy.

        Located on the third floor of The Jewish Museum, the Goodkind Media Center houses a digital library of radio and television programs from the Museum’s National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting (NJAB). It also features a changing exhibition space dedicated to video and new media.  Using computer workstations, visitors are able to search material by keyword and by categories such as art, comedy, drama, news, music, kids, Israel, and the Holocaust.

About the National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting

        The National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting, founded in 1981 in association with the Charles H. Revson Foundation, is the largest and most comprehensive body of broadcast materials on 20th century Jewish culture in the United States.  With a mission to collect, preserve and exhibit  television and radio programs related to the Jewish experience, the NJAB is an important educational resource for critical examination of how Jews have been portrayed and portray themselves, and how the mass media has addressed issues of ethnicity and diversity.  Its collection is comprised of 4,300 broadcast and cable television and radio programs.

About The Jewish Museum

The Jewish Museum was established on January 20, 1904 when Judge Mayer Sulzberger donated 26 ceremonial art objects to The Jewish Theological Seminary of America as the core of a museum collection.  Today, The Jewish Museum maintains an important collection of 26,000 objects – paintings, sculpture, works on paper, photographs, archaeological artifacts, ceremonial objects, and broadcast media.  Widely admired for its exhibitions and educational programs that inspire people of all backgrounds, The Jewish Museum is the preeminent United States institution exploring the intersection of 4,000 years of art and Jewish culture.

General Information

        Museum hours are Saturday through Wednesday, 11am to 5:45pm; and Thursday, 11am to 8pm.  Museum admission is $12.00 for adults, $10.00 for senior citizens, $7.50 for students, free for children under 12 and Jewish Museum members.  Admission is free on Saturdays.  For general information on The Jewish Museum, the public may visit the Museum’s Web site at http://www.thejewishmuseum.org or call 212.423.3200.  The Jewish Museum is located at 1109 Fifth Avenue at 92^nd Street, Manhattan.

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