HORROR OF LOSS SUBJECT OF HOLOCAUST MUSEUM ART GALLERY
MIKE ISAACS
Wilmette Life
July 7, 2009
Don’t expect graphic paintings of barbarism against innocent people or
photographs of slaughter that become snapshots of genocidal brutality.
The canvasses are not splattered in bloody red with images so overtly
disturbing that that they make us want to look away because of the
overwhelming evidence of history’s worst horrors. The art on display at
the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center’s Legacy of Absence
collection is more subtle, and in its own way, more special. In
reflecting on genocide beyond just the Holocaust of World War II, it
boasts a series of artists who have come to the subject in different
ways. The gallery is at once powerful and moving, a testament to
memory and loss more than a depiction of the act of genocide. When the
Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center was first conceived, many
of its planners were asked the same question: Why do we need another
Holocaust Museum? "I’d always cite the Legacy of Absence Gallery,"
said Museum Capital Campaign Chairman J.B. Pritzker. Pritzker was
on hand last week when the gallery was officially dedicated. "You
would expect (the gallery) to be filled with gore and horror," he
said. "I don’t think you see that in our gallery. In fact, I know
you don’t." What you do see — and even more than that, what you
feel — is hushed emptiness in different forms. For those who take
in the museum’s six intimate galleries, the experience is mostly
contemplative about dealing with loss. No room reflects that concept
better than Empty Places, which Gallery Curator Clifford Chanin fills
with landscapes of locations where genocide has occurred. The settings
are often beautiful, but their tranquility is also a piercing reminder
that human life has been extinguished leaving behind an eternal void.
Different artists have been drawn to these settings over the years
to capture them in the aftermath of unthinkable inhumanity. But the
works make an even more striking impact when seen beside others
that have been created in different ways, at different times and
reflecting different genocides. Artist Drex Brooks is represented in
the Empty Places Gallery with his black and white landscapes where
genocide against Native Americans took place. But in that same room,
and throughout the other galleries, the museum’s eclectic art also
references the African-American slave trade, the Soviet gulags,
the Spanish Civil War, and mass killings in Armenia, Cambodia,
Liberia, Rwanda and the former Yugoslavia. The artists represented
in the Legacy of Absence collection come from all over the world –
from Argentina, Austria, Belgium, Bosnia, Egypt, Ethiopia, Germany,
Indonesia, Israel, Nigeria, Poland, Russia, Senegal, South Korea,
Spain, the United States and Uruguay. But they all share something
significant in their art, the common goal of trying to capture forms
of humanity in the aftermath of efforts to wipe humanity away. Museum
Executive Director Rick Hirschhaut said that even teenagers who have
made their way to the Legacy of Absence Gallery get it; they digest
that the six galleries reflect how humanity endured and triumphed
over the worst brutality.
The Legacy of Absence collection, he said, is about "how we remember,
how we hold on, how we never forget." One of the themes of the museum
is that we all have a stake in one another, "a shared humanity,"
he said. "And all of that culminates in the Legacy of Absence Gallery."
Hirschhaut said that the museum’s upper floor initially was to be
used for administrative offices, but it was "an easy decision" to
make the change after the need for a special art gallery was expressed.
Chanin was recruited for the project after finding "The Legacy
Project," a non-profit organization that aims to build a global
exchange on the on-going consequences of great historic tragedies
of the 20th Century. He named the collection Legacy of Absence,
he said, because all of its works speak to the language of absence
and loss. "Something is missing in the world because of what has
happened," Chanin said. "I coined the phrase because (the art) tries
to describe the common inheritance of humanity after those tragic
events took place." Canadian artist Hagop Khoubersserian created
the solemn "Genocide April 24, 1915," which depicts a landscape
containing what seems an endless background of grave markers. In
the foreground, a small group of victimized souls huddle together,
trying to seek comfort in any way they can. "Nothing in this scene
offers consulation," the gallery description reads. "The figurines,
the crosses, even the moon are all featureless, fading away as we
look at them." Khoubersserian’s somber vision of Turkey’s genocide
against Aremina came right out of the experiences of his own family,
and the work initially was not for sale, he said. But he knew that it
would be viewed by people in the best context at the museum in Skokie.
"It’s found its place here," said the artist’s wife, Lisbett, last
week. "Here in this museum is just the right place for it."
The Legacy of Absence collection, in addition to the Empty Places
Gallery, includes galleries named The Legacy of Absence, So Many
Gone, Who Were They?, Memory Fades and Memory Holds. In addition to
artists from all over the world, local artists make their mark at the
gallery as well. In attendance Tuesday was Alan Cohen whose "Now,"
displayed in Empty Places, shows the Cambodian killing fields through
simple landscapes with no sign of the monstrosities that occurred
there. Evanston artist Diane Thodos has two works in the Gallery, one
called "Child" showing figures trying to disappear into one another
because of the threat of terror. All of the museum’s collection,
some of which will rotate, was recommended by a Legacy of Absence
Advisory Committee, many of whose members have art backgrounds.
Member Con Buckley’s background, however, is more rooted in history and
memory, which made her a valuable member. "It’s a unique exhibition,"
she said at the dedication. "When we looked at art, we looked at it
in the context of using art and trying to express understanding and
memory." Some of the other works that make up the Legacy of Absence
collection include: Willie Cole’s 1997 "Stowage, a large-scale
print reflecting the magnitude of the ships that brought captive
Africans to slavery in America; Kebedech Tekleab’s 1994 "The River
In Rwanda," an abstract reflection of a river teeming with bodies,
their individuality having been violently taken away and now blended
into the landscape; Halil Tikvesa’s 1997 "Mostar, Music School
on the Musala," a depiction of a desolate school in Bosnia where
only silence remains; Amer Baksic’s 1995 "Silhouette and Shadow"
series, which uses wood salvaged from the Art Academy in Sarajevo;
Ivan Sagita’s 1999 "Waiting for Death," a painting that feels still
and silent even though the figures on the canvas appear in motion; and
Maria Theresia Litschauer’s 2005 "Angelbach," where the artist traveled
around Austria documenting hundreds of places where Hungarian Jews were
taken as slave laborers. Naomi Tereza Salmon’s series, "Exhibits"
shows renderings of eye glasses, shaving brushes and dentures,
all from the Buchenwald death camp during World War II. While only
the depiction of the glasses is currently on display at the museum,
the series is an immediate reminder of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial
Museum’s exhibit featuring personal belongings that Holocaust victims
left behind. Also on display in Skokie are works by Samuel Bak, a
Holocaust survivor born in Vilna, Poland and recognized as a masterful
surrealist painter. The Legacy of Absence collection includes works
donated or loaned by the Pritzker Family, Norton and Nancy Dodge,
Sue and Bernie Pucker, the Josef Gilmer Gallery, Mira Hermoni-Levine,
Marcia and Granvil Specks, Diane Thodos and Roberta Liberman. One of
the collection’s main rooms was named after Irving and Ida Wenger,
Holocaust survivors who lived in Skokie for many years.
Several members of the Wenger family attended the dedication last week
to take in the room named for their parents. It was a night of mixed
emotions for them. "We don’t really have a place to go or to visit
to remember our family," said daughter Ruth Wenger. "We never knew
cousins or an extended family. They were all taken away from us. We
wanted to make a donation that would have meaning for our parents."
For the Wenger family, their parents live on in this extraordinary
collection; for everyone else who visits the art on display here, they
will feel that so, too, does humanity, but not without a mighty cost