Department of Anthropology

Choreography of Career: A Folklorist’s Evolving Perspective on Folklore, Heritage, and Museums

2020 Richard M. Dorson and Wells Lecture given this year by Dr. Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett, Chief Curator of the Core Exhibition and Advisor to the Director at Polin Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw.

The lecture will take place on February 25, 2020 at 6PM in Swain West 007.

A reception will follow at 800 E. Third Street, second floor of the Classroom Office Building.

Dr. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett entered the field of folklore more than half a century ago during formative years in the field. She saw a shift from tale types to structuralism and semiotics, from text to context, from context to performance, and from the academy to the public sector. Dr. Kirshenblatt-Gimblett’s formation as a folklorist during the 1960s and in the years that followed has come to define the latest chapter in her career – as a scholar interested in the history and theory of exhibition, museums, and tangible and intangible heritage, and as a curator responsible for the Core Exhibition, a multimedia narrative experience, at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews, in Warsaw.

Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett is Chief Curator of the Core Exhibition at POLIN Museum of the History of Polish Jews and University Professor Emerita and Professor Emerita of Performance Studies at New York University. Her books include Destination Culture: Tourism, Museums, and Heritage; Image before My Eyes: A Photographic History of Jewish Life in Poland, 1864–1939 (with Lucjan Dobroszycki); and They Called Me Mayer July: Painted Memories of a Jewish Childhood in Poland Before the Holocaust (with Mayer Kirshenblatt). She received the Officer’s Cross of the Order of Merit of the Republic of Poland and was elected to the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She currently serves on Advisory Boards for Jewish museums in Vienna, Berlin, and Moscow and advises on museum and exhibition projects in the United States, Lithuania, Albania, and Israel.

This event is sponsored by the Department of Folklore and Ethnomusicology, the Institute for Advanced Study, the Jewish Studies Program, the Polish Studies Center, and the Mathers Museum of World Cultures.

Please refer flyer for more information