Episode 11: Tobi Kahn

Learn more about Wolfgang Laib below, at 07:35.

The term “Holy of Holies” refers to the inner sanctuary of the Jewish Temple in Jerusalem where the Ark of the Covenant was maintained. Read more in this Wikipedia article. The Jewish priesthood wore garments specific to their order, and the High Priest of Israel had additional special vestments, as described here.

Mosaic of the Twelve Tribes of Israel, from the façade of Givat Mordechai Etz Yosef synagogue, Ha Rav Gold Street, in Jerusalem. Top row, right to left: Reuben, Judah, Dan, Asher. Middle row: Simeon, Issachar, Naphtali, Joseph. Bottom row: Levi, Zebulun, Gad, Benjamin. Source: Wikipedia

The Twelve Tribes of Israel, listed here, took their names from the sons of the patriarch Jacob. The Bible makes some references to standards or flags for the Twelve Tribes, and fuller descriptions of them are found in midrashic sources.

Kahn makes reference to the extravagant movie epics based (sometimes loosely) on Biblical stories produced by Hollywood in the 1950s and 1960s. One well-known example is the film The Ten Commandments (1956), starring Charleton Heston. The film’s depiction of the parting of the Red Sea was perhaps the most complex visual effect attempted up to that time.

Italian poster for The Ten Commandments (1956), featuring the parting of the Red Sea. Collection of Michael Morris, O.P. Photo by Jeffrey Vaughn.

MOCRA’s 2007 exhibition The Celluloid Bible: Marketing Films Inspired by Scripture featured posters from many of these Biblical extravaganzas, along with other promotional materials as seen in this “Living St. Louis” segment:

Albert Pinkham Ryder, Moonlit Cove, early to mid-1880s. The Phillips Collection.

Albert Pinkham Ryder (1847–1917) is known for his atmospheric, suggestive paintings. 

Kahn’s work was included in a 1999-2000 exhibition at the Albright-Knox Art Gallery in Buffalo, New York, titled Landscape at the Millennium, which paired nineteenth-century landscape paintings from the collections of the Albright-Knox Art Gallery and the Parrish Art Museum, Southampton, New York, with two contemporary installations by Kahn and painter Pat Steir. Find the exhibition catalogue on WorldCat.

Tobi Kahn: Sky & Water was shown at the Neuberger Museum of Art in Purchase, N.Y., in 2003. Find the exhibition catalogue on WorldCat. 

Josef Albers (1888–1976) was an artist and an influential theorist and educator. He is particularly known for the Homages to the Square he painted between 1950 and 1976 and for his 1963 publication Interaction of Color. Learn more about Albers and his approach to art education.

James Turrell (b. 1943) is an American artist primarily concerned with light and space. Among other works, he is known for his “skyscapes” and his ongoing project to transform the Roden Crater.

Wolfgang Laib (b. 1950) is a German artist whose work is often highly conceptual and employs predominantly natural, organic, ephemeral materials. Watch an interview with Laib on Art21.

Doug Wheeler (b. 1939) is considered a pioneer of the “Light and Space” movement in Southern California in the 1960s and 1970s.

See images of Kahn’s meditative space at the HealthCare Chaplaincy in New York.

Read about other sacred space projects by Kahn in this interview in Image and this article in Tablet. 

See above at 03:05 for a discussion of the Jewish Museum exhibition.

Kahn’s work was included in a 1987 exhibition at the Everson Museum of Art in Syracuse, NY, titled Sacred Spaces, curated by Dominique Nahas. Find the exhibition catalogue on WorldCat.

See above at 05:05 for a discussion of the Holy of Holies.

Jane Blaffer Owen (1915–2010) dedicated much of her life to the small town of New Harmony, Indiana. Situated on the Wabash River, New Harmony was the site of two 19th-century utopian communities. Under Owen’s guidance and with her patronage, it also became home to a rich body of contemporary art and architecture by figures such as Richard Meier, Jacques Lipschitz, Philip Johnson, and Stephen DeStaebler—a collection now known as the Jane Blaffer Owen Sanctuary. Read a remembrance of Jane Owen by Fr. Dempsey.

Tobi Kahn, Shalev, 1993. Bronze and granite. Collection of Jane Blaffer Owen Sanctuary, New Harmony, IN.

Kahn's 1993 sculpture Shalev is situated in New Harmony on the banks of the Wabash River.

Peter Selz (1919–2019) was a renowned curator of contemporary art as well as a historian of German Expressionism. Selz became the curator of the department of painting and sculpture at the Museum of Modern Art, New York in 1958. In 1965 he was called to the University of California, Berkeley to found the university’s art museum. Selz served as its director from 1965 to 1973. He was known more recently for his provocative, politically charged exhibitions like The Art of Engagement, which showed at the American University Museum at the Katzen Arts Center in 2006. Selz curated both Tobi Kahn: Metamorphoses, shown at MOCRA in 1998, and the Patrick Graham retrospective The Silence Becomes the Painting, shown at MOCRA in 2012. Selz spoke at MOCRA twice, in 1995 on the topic of “Degenerate Art,” and in a 2012 panel discussion on the work of Patrick Graham, which you can watch here.

Jane Daggett Dillenberger (1916–2014) was one of the pioneers in the dialogue between modern art and religion, beginning her work in the field of art history in 1942. As Professor Emerita in Art and Religion at the Graduate Theological Union, in Berkeley, California, she remained actively involved in the "religion and the arts" program at the Graduate Theological Union until her death. In addition to her teaching, she was a curator and a scholar. Her most important exhibitions were the 1972–1973 The Hand and the Spirit: Religious Art in America, 1700–1900, which she co-curated with art historian and museum director Joshua Taylor, and its sequel, Perceptions of the Spirit in 20th Century American Art, which she co-curated with her then-husband, theologian John Dillenberger. Her books include Image and Spirit in Sacred and Secular Art, Style and Content in Christian Art, and The Religious Art of Andy Warhol. Her final book, The Religious Art of Pablo Picasso, co-authored with art historian John Handley, was published in 2014. (Handley lectured on the book at MOCRA in 2014.) Dllenberger gave a keynote address at “The Artist and Sacred Space,” a 1992 conference marking MOCRA’s opening. She also appears in MOCRA Voices, Episode 6, discussing St. Peter's Lutheran Church in Manhattan.

Alberto Giacometti (1901–1966) is best known as a sculptor, although he was a capable painter, printmaker and draughtsman as well. He was associated with the Surrealists in Paris in the 1930s, but his later work was influenced by Existentialist thought.

Henry Moore (1898–1986) is best known for his semi-abstract monumental bronze sculptures, many displayed as public works of art. Like Giacometti, he is associated with representations of the human figure, but where Giacometti’s figures tend to be attenuated and spare, Moore’s are often undulating and even voluptuous.

The Roofless Church, New Harmony, IN.

The Roofless Church is a structure in New Harmony designed by renowned architect Philip Johnson. The non-denominational church was commissioned by Jane Blaffer Owen and dedicated in 1960. Johnson and Owen envisioned a church where the only roof large enough to encompass a world of worshipers was the sky.

Visit the Fort Wayne Museum of Art website here.

The Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida, presented Tobi Kahn: Reverie in 2015. 

Lyonel Feininger (1871–1956), a major figure of the German Bauhaus, is renowned for his paintings of architecture and seascapes, but his work had a more whimsical dimension, including comic strips and miniature hand-carved wooden figures and buildings, known as City at the Edge of the World.

Special calendars are used to count off the seven weeks of the Omer, the 49-day interval beginning on the second day of Passover—when an omer, or measure of barley, was offered at the Temple in Jerusalem—and ends on the day before Shavuot, celebrating the giving of the Torah to the Israelites at Sinai. Symbolically, the time between the two holidays traces the path from physical freedom (the Exodus) to spiritual freedom (attained by the acceptance of the law).

Tobi Kahn, Saphyr, 2002. Acrylic on wood. Collection of The Jewish Museum, New York.

Kahn's Saphyr is a sculptural grid with 49 pegs conceived as miniature houses, each with a unique shape. Learn more about this work, now in the collection of The Jewish Museum, New York. 

Nessa Rapoport

Nessa Rapoport is Senior Program Officer at the Charles H. Revson Foundation. Previously, she was a senior editor at Bantam Books, where she specialized in memoirs. Rapoport is the author of a novel, Preparing for Sabbath; a collection of prose poems, A Woman’s Book of Grieving; and a memoir, House on the River: A Summer Journey. Her essays and stories have been published in the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, and Forward and have been widely anthologized. Her column, “Inner Life,” appears in The Jewish Week. Rapoport writes and speaks frequently on Jewish culture and imagination and has collaborated on projects with her husband, Tobi Kahn.

• Br. Stephen Erspamer, OSB, liturgical design consultant, St. Meinrad, IN
• Tobi Kahn, artist, New York
• Dr. Fatemeh Keshavarz, Associate Professor of Persian Language and Literature & Jewish and Near Eastern Studies, Washington University, St. Louis
• Dr. John Renard, Professor of Theological Studies, Saint Louis University, St. Louis
• Rabbi Susan Talve, Central Reform Congregation, St. Louis     

View images of Kahn’s installation in the sanctuary of Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshrun in Milwaukee, WI.

View images of Kahn’s installation in the Elliot Binder Chapel of Temple Beth El of Northern Valley in Closter, NJ.

See above at 08:15 for a discussion of Kahn’s installation at the HealthCare Chaplaincy in New York.

Listen to a discussion of the Louise Nevelson Chapel of the Good Shepherd at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in Manhattan in MOCRA Voices, Episode 6: Ralph Peterson and Jane Daggett Dillenberger. 

Artist Elke Reva Sudin is Founder and Executive Director of Jewish Art Now; her husband, filmmaker Saul Sudin, is Co-Founder and Creative Director. Jewish Art Now seeks to serve as “a central portal for the convergence of Judaism and contemporary art with a fresh and innovative perspective. . . . Jewish Art Now recharges Jewish identity and its relationship to the visual through engaging exhibitions, interactive events, and dynamic media content on the web.”

Kahn refers to another initiative linking Judaism and contemporary art, the Jewish Art Salon, which describes itself as “an international artist-driven community that promotes understanding and appreciation of contemporary and innovative Jewish visual art.” Its projects include exhibits, interactive art events, and bi-monthly salon sessions in the New York City area with international artists and scholars. Visit the Jewish Art Salon website. Artist Yona Verwer is Executive Director of the Jewish Artists Salon. Rabbi Leon Morris, currently President of Pardes Institute of Jewish Studies, was Shalom Hartman Institute of North America Vice President for Programs in Israel. He was also the founding director of the Skirball Center for Adult Jewish Learning at Temple Emanu-El in Manhattan.

Learn more about the practice of beit midrash.

Kahn’s family name derives from the Hebrew word for “priest,” kohen (כֹּהֵן). Learn more about the biblical origins and ancient role of the Aaronic priesthood, as well as its place in the context of contemporary Judaism.

Jewish worship is a richly layered tapestry of texts and practices, which cannot be done justice here. That being said, Kahn refers to Amidah, a series of blessings that are central to Jewish worship. Avodah, signifying worship, labor or service, is one of these blessings, and asks God to restore the Temple services and sacrificial services.

To this day in many Jewish congregations, Kohanim impart the priestly blessing found in Numbers 6:23–27. 

See above at 22:55 for a discussion of the exhibition Avoda: Objects of the Spirit.

Laura Kruger has been curator of the Museum at Hebrew Union College - Jewish Institute of Religion since 1991.

Visit the School of Visual Arts website.

Shirin Neshat (b. 1957) is an Iranian visual artist known primarily for her work in film, video and photography. Watch her TED Talk: