Art

A photographer, nurse, partisan fighter, survivor, and educator, Faye Schulman devoted her life to ensuring that the world understood that Jews resisted Nazi persecution in countless ways. Through her courage and determination, she preserved a unique photographic record of Jewish partisan life in Eastern Europe during World War II. Her photographs and testimony continue to challenge misconceptions about Jewish passivity during the Holocaust and serve as enduring proof of resilience, resistance, and survival.

Else Berg was a Jewish artist whose life and work unfolded across Berlin, Paris, and Amsterdam, marked by constant experimentation in style, form, and color. Together with her lifelong partner, Samuel (Mommie) Schwarz, she was murdered in Auschwitz in 1942, leaving behind a fragmented but powerful artistic legacy.

Joan E. Biren, or JEB, is a photographer and filmmaker who documented lesbian life and social justice movements from the early 1970s to today. A member of the influential Furies Collective in Washington, D.C., Biren was among the first lesbian photographers to research and construct a history of lesbians in photography. 

Bianca Eshel-Gershuni (1932-2020) was a pioneering Israeli sculptor and jewelry designer known for challenging artistic conventions and redefining the boundaries between craft and fine art. In contrast to the dominant minimalist, conceptual, and abstract tendencies of her time, her work proposed an aesthetic of abundance—a profusion of materiality, color, narrativity, and personal expression—paving the way for generations of artists exploring gender, kitsch, and popular culture.

Mae Rockland Tupa (b. 1937) is an accomplished multimedia artist and author whose prolific work has helped shape the field of Jewish Americana. Her work, including papercuts, prints, and textiles, explores themes of Jewish identity, history, and culture. She has published seven books, including the pioneering 1973 text The Work of Our Hands: Jewish Needlecraft for Today. Her work is housed in the collections of numerous institutions, such as The Jewish Museum in New York City.

Eva Zeisel’s modernist ceramic work achieved major fame and critical success and even made waves during her early career in the Soviet Union. Upon moving to the United States, Zeisel experimented with feminine silhouettes in her pottery and gained widespread success for her artistry and design work.