Jewish Ceremonials in Mainstream Art Museums w/ Danny Smith Salfati, Katya Oicherman, and Gabriel Goldstein

Watch the recording on CAJM’s Youtube channel!

Below is a list of resources that came up during the conversation:

  1. Susan Vogel, “Always True to the Object, in Our Fashion”
    Vogel challenges the idea that museum displays are neutral. Selection, classification, labeling, placement, and juxtaposition inevitably shape how visitors understand objects. Her foundational essay offers a valuable lens for considering how Judaica -and other culturally specific material- changes meaning when displayed within specialized versus encyclopedic museum contexts.

  2. Sidney Littlefield Kasfir, “One Tribe, One Style?”
    Kasfir critiques museum and anthropological traditions that classify African art according to rigid cultural categories, obscuring exchange, movement, and historical complexity. Though focused on African art, her argument provides a productive framework for asking whether culturally specific classifications illuminate Judaica or inadvertently separate it from broader artistic and geographic histories.

  3. Simone Saidmehr, “This Jewish Museum Is Lending Art Across America - With One Condition”
    The Forward examines the Jewish Museum’s initiative to place Judaica within encyclopedic museums-with the condition that objects not be segregated into dedicated Judaica galleries. The project raises provocative questions about integration and cultural specificity: what happens when Jewish objects are presented as simultaneously Jewish and part of broader art-historical narratives?

  4. “Embodying the Sacred: Jewish Ritual Art from the Bernard Museum of Judaica”
    This new exhibition brings Jewish ritual objects from the Bernard Museum of Judaica into Indiana University’s encyclopedic Eskenazi Museum. 

  5. Marsha L. Semmel, Partnership Power
    Semmel positions partnership as central to contemporary museum practice, exploring collaboration, shared authority, and institutional networks. Particularly relevant for culturally specific museums, the book offers a framework for considering how specialized institutions can extend their influence through partnerships, loans, knowledge exchange, and relationships with larger encyclopedic institutions.

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