A guidebook to the most current trends in contemporary Jewish art and design, Reinventing Ritual provides an unprecedented look at the work and thought of contemporary artists as they respond to the needs and practices of traditional culture. Beautifully illustrated with new art from Israel, Europe, and the Americas, this publication features both traditional and avant-garde sculpture, textiles, architecture, metalwork, and ceramics by forty leading artists.
Author Daniel Belasco surveys current trends in Jewish ritual art and the influences of feminism, environmentalism, multiculturalism, and new media; Julie Lasky provides a groundbreaking discussion of the role of recycling and social consciousness in contemporary Jewish design; Danya Ruttenberg, a recently ordained rabbi, offers a lively perspective on the constantly evolving Jewish impulse "to concretize the encounter with the Divine"; Arnold M. Eisen writes an absorbing and personal commentary on the role of ritual in Jewish life today; and Tamar Rubin contributes an illustrated timeline covering key Jewish cultural and historical events from 1994 to 2008.

Reinventing Ritual: Contemporary Art and Design for Jewish Life

Arts & Photography

Belasco, Daniel

History & Criticism

Yale University Press

Celebrates the first exhibition devoted to the finely crafted and researched costumes, objects, and drawings that Mary Reid Kelley creates for her visually and intellectually stimulating videos made in collaboration with Patrick Kelley. Mary Reid Kelley celebrates the first museum exhibition devoted to the finely crafted and researched costumes, objects, and drawings that Mary Reid Kelley creates for her visually and intellectually stimulating videos. An essay by curator Daniel Belasco analyzes the sources and significance of the working objects in how they promote the “unreality effect” of Mary Reid Kelley’s videos, which combine both the analog and digital and the personal and historical. A conversation between Corinna Ripps Schaming and Mary Reid Kelley and her long-time collaborator Patrick Kelley reveals insights into their working process. For the first time, the full range of the artist’s costumes, props, drawings, furniture, and accessories are photographed and presented as unique works of art.

Mary Reid Kelley: Working Objects and Videos (Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art)

Pasti, Sara J.

Schaming, Corinna Ripps

Distribution Partners

How a collective of artists, storytellers, and activists exploited the new technology of portable video for creative and political purposes.

Videofreex: The Art of Guerrilla Television (Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art)

Ingall, Andrew

Colley, Tom

Roe, Tom

Collections, Catalogs & Exhibitions

Documents the art and science of three-dimensional abstract artworks created in the 1970s and 1980s by one of the leading innovators of fine art holography.The first-ever catalogue dedicated to light artist and holographer Rudie Berkhout, The Floating World focuses on the transmission holograms Berkhout made from 1978 to 1989, a peak period of his creativity and professional recognition. In a transmission hologram, a rear-mounted light shines on a glass plate to illuminate a three-dimensional image. Curator Daniel Belasco situates Berkhout in the art and culture of his day, from the mass-produced holograms on the cover of National Geographic to the other artists working at the intersection of technology and audience participation. Holography scholar Martina Mrongovius provides a detailed account of the technology and craft in Berkhout’s working process. Additional catalogue components include reprints of two important artist statements, multiple illustrations of exhibited art works, bibliography, and detailed exhibition history. Berkhout envisioned his abstract holograms as the marriage of science, art, and philosophy.

The Floating World: Holograms by Rudie Berkout (Samuel Dorsky Museum of Art)

Mrongovius, Martina

Individual Artists

Lichtenstein Remembered

Gagosian / Rizzoli

Raving In The Desert

Rubin, David S.

Ganihar, Tomer

Auchincloss, Pamela

Photography & Video

Contemporary Arts Center

Women Artists in Midcentury America: A History in Ten Exhibitions

Reaktion Books

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Books by Belasco, Daniel