Remembrance and Renewal will be the first exhibition to examine the impact of the Holocaust on the development of midcentury American art.
Remembrance and Renewal is the first exhibition to examine the impact of the Holocaust on the development of midcentury American art. It brings together 74 works of art from collections nationwide, featuring a wide range of aesthetic approaches by artists both canonical and little known.
An accompanying catalogue is published by Yale University Press.
Generous support for this exhibition and catalogue has been provided by the Henry Luce Foundation; the Foltyn Family; the Dorit and Gerald Paul Fund for Jewish Culture and the Arts in the Borns Jewish Studies Program, Indiana University; Glick Philanthropies; the Herbert Simon Family Foundation; the IU Presidential Arts and Humanities program; the Jewish Culture Center, Indiana University; the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture; the Boris Lurie Art Foundation and the Schaina & Josephina Lurje Memorial Foundation; Jack and Grace Dayan; POSH on Kirkwood, Elliot R. Lewis; the Pressman Family; Paula W. Sunderman, PhD; Dorit S. Paul; faculty research funding from the Borns Jewish Studies Program, Indiana University; Daniel Klausner; Paul Robins and Idie Kesner; and Jo and Steve Ham.
Curator talk: November 12, 2025 at 12 p.m. Exhibition curator Jenny McComas will present a talk about Remembrance and Renewal for the Fritz Ascher Society in New York. Register for the event (virtual/Zoom): "Confronting the Holocaust in Midcentury American Art."
Radius: Helen Frankenthaler Prints in Context displays eighteen prints by celebrated Abstract Expressionist Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) side-by-side with prints by contemporaries such as Lee Krasner, Robert Motherwell, and Jackson Pollock.
Helen Frankenthaler (1928–2011) was one of the most innovative and influential artists to emerge in the mid-twentieth century. Initially celebrated for her spontaneous and expressive Abstract Expressionist painting, she continuously developed her artistic approach throughout her lengthy career.
In 1961, Frankenthaler made her first print and took on the collaborative and technical challenge of printmaking. Over the next fifty years she became one of the most active and creative printmakers of her generation, creating a body of work that stands out for the diversity of techniques she used and the number of studios with which she partnered.
Radius: Helen Frankenthaler Prints in Context celebrates the generous gift of fifteen prints from the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation, which in 2023 joined three other Frankenthaler prints in the Eskenazi Museum of Art collection. The exhibition displays Frankenthaler’s prints side-by-side with other prints from the museum's collection by artists who had ties to the Abstract Expressionist movement, such as Lee Krasner, Robert Motherwell, and Jackson Pollock. This dialogue illuminates Frankenthaler’s connections with her contemporaries as well as her ingenuity and unique mastery of printmaking. The exhibition includes four proofs (test prints) and the final edition print of Radius (1993), evoking the circle of artists in Frankenthaler’s orbit and inspiring the title.
This exhibition is made possible through the generosity of the Helen Frankenthaler Foundation and Del and Letty Newkirk.
Ali Cherri is a Lebanese artist who makes film, sculpture, paintings, and installations, often combining found artifacts with handmade forms.
In the shadow of the Merowe Dam in Northern Sudan, local brickmakers mix earth with the water of the Nile River. The men fire the wet clay over mudded kilns fed by dry brush, as steam rises in thick clouds off the baking blocks. As they labor in the hot sun, voiceovers in English, French, and Arabic recount creation myths in which mankind is fashioned from mud.
The construction of Africa’s largest hydropower plant displaced more than 50,000 people as it transformed ecosystems and flooded cultural and archaeological sites. The grand scale and sophistication of the dam contrasts starkly with the brickmakers’ spare conditions, underscoring the destructive potential of development and heightening the tension between tradition and modernity.
Ali Cherri is a Lebanese artist who makes film, sculpture, paintings, and installations, often combining found artifacts with handmade forms. He has devoted significant time to making work in and about Sudan, including the fictional film Le Barrage (The Dam), which features the same men pictured in this artwork. Of Men and Gods and Mud premiered at the 59th International Art Exhibition of La Biennale di Venezia, where it was awarded the Silver Lion for a Promising Young Participant in the International Exhibition.
Ali Cherri
Of Men and Gods and Mud, 2022
Three-channel video with sound, 18:20
© Ali Cherri, courtesy the Artist and Galerie Imane Fáres, Paris