November 1, 2009
“Creative Souls: Mental Health, Jewish Life and Art,” a panel discussion featuring members of the Department of Psychology at the University of Hartford and a representative of Jewish Family Services, is the second in a new series of programs at the Maurice Greenberg Center for Judaic Studies, called the First-of-the-Month Contemporary Issues Forum. The symposium will also feature a showing of the trailer for the television documentary
Changing Minds: The Inspirational Story of Susan Weinreich, and a discussion of how her art was instrumental in her road to recovery from paranoid schizophrenia.
The program, which is free and open to the public, will begin at 1:30 p.m. on Sunday, Nov. 1, and the opening panel discussion will be followed by the Exhibition opening at 3:45 p.m. The discussion will take place in Wilde Auditorium, in the Harry Jack Gray Center, University of Hartford, 200 Bloomfield Ave., West Hartford. The Sherman Museum of Jewish Civilization is located in the University’s Mortensen Library, which is also in the Harry Jack Gray Center.
This event will also celebrate the opening of
The Art of the Jews: 3,000 Years in the Making, an exhibition that will open on Nov. 1, 2009 and run through Feb. 1, 2010 in the George and Lottie Sherman Museum of Jewish Civilization at the Mortensen Library at the University of Hartford. The exhibition includes the on-going biblical archaeology artifacts on loan from the State of Israel from the Bethsaida excavations, the Irving and Fran Waltman Cantorial collection and two new collections: 35 items from the Joel and SusAnna Grae Mediterranean and Judaic Collections, and the new oil paintings from Weinreich.
Weinreich is an accomplished and gifted painter whose work has been exhibited across the nation. Diagnosed at the age of 19 with paranoid schizophrenia while attending the Rhode Island School of Design, she credits the beginning of her recovery to her former psychiatrist, Dr. Samuel C. Klagsbrun (Four Winds Hospital, Westchester, N.Y.), who encouraged her passion for creating art when she was unable to speak due to her illness.
Weinreich’s exhibit,
Kiss, The Breath of Life, will have a limited four-month run in the Sherman Museum and was specifically created for this show. The show, which is a tribute to Four Winds Hospital, is based upon the biblical image of the “Dry Bones” from the Book of Ezekiel.
The Grae Collection will be on loan to the Sherman Museum for the next two years and includes antiquities from Mesopotamia and Egypt as well as items from the Middle Ages and the Modern period. In addition, the personal collections of local individuals will be highlighted including a rare family Bible from the 16th century on loan from Judge Howard Scheinblum.
The Sherman Museum is free and open to the public and available for group and individual visits five days a week and for special pre-arranged visits with student docents. For hours please consult the Greenberg Center website at
www.hartford.edu/greenberg or call 860-768-4964.
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