FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE

Media contact:
Marge Goldwater, Director
Schusterman Visiting Israeli Artist Program
212.249.1998
margegoldwater@gmail.com

 

14 LEADING ISRAELI ARTISTS SELECTED FOR U.S. RESIDENCIES FALL 2010-SPRING 2011

Schusterman Visiting Artist Program to bring Israeli artists to renowned U.S. institutions; residencies offer opportunity for audiences to engage with contemporary Israeli culture

New York, NY—September 20, 2010-The Schusterman Visiting Artist Program announced today the names of 14 leading Israeli artists it will place in residencies at colleges, universities and other cultural organizations across the U.S. this fall and next spring. The artists—renowned in a variety of disciplines, including filmmaking, choreography, music and literature—will spend two to four months presenting their work through relevant programming, classes, exhibitions and performances.

Among the 14 artists coming this year are filmmakers Dana Goren and Yael Hersonski, the winners of the Best Documentary award at the Jerusalem Film Festival in 2009 and 2010, respectively. Goren, who will be in residence this fall at JFilm: The Pittsburgh Jewish Film Forum, will teach at various schools throughout the city and will also engage the community by making a film with local residents.

Hersonski, whose Holocaust documentary A Film Unfinished has received enormous attention, including a rave review in the New York Times and several international awards, will be hosted by Tufts University in the spring.

 

“Since we launched the Schusterman Visiting Artists Program in 2008, 16 cities have hosted an unusually talented array of artists,” said Lynn Schusterman, chair of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation. “These artists embody the vibrant, creative face of Israel and provide a meaningful way to connect North Americans to a diverse and complex contemporary Israel that goes beyond the prism of conflict.”

In addition to Goren and Hersonski, the Schusterman Visiting Artist Program cohort for fall 2010 through spring 2011 includes:

• Photographer Assaf Evron and visual and performance artist Nelly Agassi, who will be hosted this fall by the Weinstein JCC in Richmond, VA. The residency will culminate in an exhibition of their work.

• Performance and installation artist and musician Ohad Fishof, and dancer and choreographer Noa Zuk, who will be in residence at Ohio State University in the fall. Both will teach in OSU’s distinguished dance department; Fishof will also work with students in OSU’s Experimental Media and Movement Arts Lab.

• Choreographers and dancers Yossi Berg and Oded Graf, who will be in residence this winter at the Chutzpah Festival, an international performing arts festival held each year in Vancouver, B.C. They will create a new work while there.

• Writer Assaf Gavron, who will be at Chapman University in Orange, CA, this spring. Gavron has had best-selling novels in Israel, and his most recent, Almost Dead, was published last spring by HarperCollins. He has translated such writers as Philip Roth, J.D. Salinger and Jonathan Safran Foer, among others.

• Musician Amir Gwirtzman, who presented 43 workshops, 16 concerts and three teaching sessions in 20 cities as an artist-in-residence last spring at The Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life. Gwirtzman will take his 20 instruments on the road again this spring to perform in other cities and states served by the Institute.

• Visual artist Tamar Harpaz, who will be in residence this spring at SPACES, an artist-run alternative space in Cleveland, OH. Harpaz, who works with optics, will create an installation in the SPACES gallery and engage audiences through gallery talks, master classes and other teaching opportunities.

• One of Israel’s leading cinematographers, Yoav Kosh, who will be in residence at Colby College in Lewiston, ME, in the spring. He will also be at other colleges and universities in Maine and is working closely with the Maine Jewish Festival as well.

• Pablo Utin, one of Israel’s leading film scholars and critics and the author of The New Israeli Cinema: Conversations with Filmmakers. Utin is being hosted this fall by the Motion Pictures Department at the School of Communication at the University of Miami, the Sue and Leonard Miller Center for Contemporary Judaic Studies and the George Feldenkreis Program in Judaic Studies at the University of Miami, along with the UM Hillel.

“Providing a learning experience within a multicultural and international context is a strategic goal of the Motion Picture Program,” says Konstantia Kontaxis, Motion Picture Program director at the School of Communication at the University of Miami. “We are thankful to our partners and to Mr. Utin for making this residency possible.”

With funding from the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation and others, the Schusterman Visiting Artist Program is one of the largest organized residency programs of Israeli artists ever launched in the U.S. It awards Israeli artists—including filmmakers, choreographers, musicians, writers and visual artists—long-term residencies at North American universities, museums, Jewish community centers and other cultural organizations, with a focus on fostering interaction between the artists and the communities where they are based.

“The Schusterman Visiting Artist Program allows members of the host community and the visiting artists to connect in a variety of settings—from formal to informal, Jewish to non-Jewish—over a significant period of time, rather than the more traditional one-off experience,” says Marge Goldwater, the program’s director. “As we look back on the first two years, we see that the success of the longer residencies has prompted host institutions to continue to find ways to bring Israeli cultural leaders to their communities after the Schusterman artist has left.”

For more information about the program and the artists, please contact Marge Goldwater and visit the Schusterman Visiting Artist Program website.

About the Schusterman Visiting Artist Program

The Schusterman Visiting Artists Program, a project of the Foundation for Jewish Culture, was founded in June 2008 to provide a new avenue for connecting North American audiences with Israel through the lens of Israeli artists embedded in residencies in communities across the U.S. www.jewishculture.org

EIGHT LEADING ISRAELI ARTISTS SELECTED FOR U.S. RESIDENCIES THIS SPRING

Schusterman Visiting Artist Program to bring Israeli artists to renowned U.S. institutions; residencies offer opportunity for audiences to engage with contemporary Israeli culture

New York, NY—January 21, 2010 –The Schusterman Visiting Artist Program announced today the names of eight leading Israeli artists it will place in long-term residencies at renowned institutions across the U.S. this spring. The artists hail from a variety of disciplines, including filmmaking, choreography, music and literature, and they will spend two to four months showcasing their art through relevant programming, classes, exhibitions and performances.

“We are excited to bring this extraordinary group of Israeli artists to American audiences,” said Lynn Schusterman, chair of the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation, which launched the program in 2008. “They embody the vibrant, creative face of Israel and provide a meaningful way to connect North Americans to a diverse and complex contemporary Israel that goes beyond the prism of conflict.”

The Schusterman Visiting Artist Program spring 2010 cohort will include:

• Filmmaker Ayelet Bargur, director of The House on August Street. She will be in residence at the Pittsburgh Jewish and Israeli Film Festival.
• Documentary filmmakers Dan and Noit Geva. Dan, an award-winning director, cinematographer, producer, editor and academic scholar and Noit, a producer and screenwriter, will be in residence at the Maryland Institute College of Art in Baltimore. Dan will also teach a class on Israeli film at Johns Hopkins University.
• Performance artists Judah (Gilor Yehuda) and Tedross (Reuben Aragai) who together comprise AXUM, which adds unique Middle Eastern and Ethiopian sounds to Israeli hip-hop and reggae. They will be hosted by the Emory University Hillel.
• Choreographer Idan Cohen, whose recent Swan Lake production has had enormous success in Israel and Europe. He will be hosted by the Amherst and Smith College Hillels and the Five College Dance Department (Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, Smith and UMass Amherst). At the end of his residency, the dancers in his company will join him for the U.S. premiere of his full-length version of Swan Lake in Amherst and performances at CPR—Center for Performance Research in New York City.
• Author Alex Epstein, one of Israel’s rising stars in the literary world. He will be teaching at the University of Denver, and his collection of stories, “Blue Has No South,” will be released in the U.S. this spring.
• Musician Amir Gwirtzman, a veritable Pied Piper, who has performed at the White House and in festivals all over the world. Under the sponsorship of the Goldring/Woldenberg Institute of Southern Jewish Life, which is based in Jackson, Mississippi, Gwirtzman will take his 20 instruments on the road to perform in communities across the South.

“Coming to the U.S. as part of the Schusterman Visiting Artist Program is a highlight of my career so far,” Gwirtzman said. “It offers me a great opportunity to develop as a solo artist, and I am looking forward to bringing the musical aromas and flavors of my homeland to audiences young and old, Jews and non-Jews. I will play a mix of styles and musical instruments that present Israel as an intricate, multi-faceted mosaic of East and West, modern and ancient, religious, secular and multi-ethnic.”

With funding from the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation and others, the Schusterman Visiting Artist Program is one of the largest organized residency programs of Israeli artists ever to launch in the U.S. It awards Israeli artists—including filmmakers, choreographers, musicians, writers and visual artists—two- to four-month residencies at North American universities, museums, Jewish community centers and other cultural or ganizations, with a focus on fostering interaction between the artists and the communities where they are based.

In 2008-09, the program supported five visiting artists and increased to 14 in 2009-10. Past participants include David Polonsky, art director of the Oscar-nominated Waltz with Bashir, as well as D.J. Ronen Sabbo and performance artist Anat Pick. An outside evaluation completed in July 2009 concluded that by embedding Israeli artists in communities across the U.S., the program offers a promising new model for engaging Americans and Israelis in in-depth exchanges that have potential for a stronger, more lasting impact than the one-sided shaliach model and standard company tours.

“The Schusterman Visiting Artist Program leverages the deep impact of the artist-in-residence format to build a new bridge between Israel and the U.S.,” says Marge Goldwater, the program’s director. “The experience broadens the awareness of the cultural sophistication of Israeli artists and its art, particularly for audiences less familiar with Israel, and it appeals to young people not necessarily involved in the Jewish community but who are drawn in by the art content.”

For more information about the program and the artists, please contact Marge Goldwater and visit the Schusterman Visiting Artist Program website.

About the Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation

The Charles and Lynn Schusterman Family Foundation (CLSFF) was  established in 1987 as a private foundation dedicated to helping the Jewish people flourish by supporting programs throughout the world that spread the joy of Jewish living, giving and learning. The Foundation also provides assistance to non-sectarian charitable organizations dedicated to enhancing the quality of life in Tulsa, Oklahoma, especially in the areas of education, child advocacy and community service. www.schusterman.org