Family history, religious symbols and rituals, and the colors of nature were all sources of inspiration for Tobi Kahn’s new exhibit, Memory and Inheritance, at the Museum at Eldridge Street. Kahn has consistently exhibited in museums and galleries across the United States and internationally since breaking onto the art scene in the 1985 Guggenheim Museum exhibition, “New Horizons in American Art.” This new installation marks Kahn’s first solo show in his hometown of New York City in a decade. Untapped New York spoke with the artist to learn more about the nearly 50 works of art and ceremonial objects on display inside the former synagogue.
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Kahn has a long-standing relationship with the Museum at Eldridge Street. In addition to his personal experience of visiting the synagogue for various baby events and weddings, he’s previously worked with the Museum to create a series of mezuzahs. These small sacred objects incorporated glass from the historic synagogue’s windows. “I’m a conceptual artist. Beauty is very important to me. But when you have a project that takes something that already exists and turns it into something new while keeping its original power, that really is transcendent,” Kahn says. In the Jewish faith, mezuzahs are placed at entrances to a home for protection and blessings. You can see some of the mezuzahs Kahn made in the new exhibit.
“I’m a huge fan of the Museum at Eldridge Street, as it is a space that is imbued with holiness,” Kahn continued, “I’m intrigued with spaces that have their own history so I was thrilled when asked to have an exhibit here.”
Photo by Erin Flynn, Courtesy of the Museum at Eldridge Street
Visitors to the exhibit will see more than 40 works including ceremonial objects, paintings, and photographs of large-scale sculptures spread out over the Women’s Balcony and a lower-level gallery. The works represent roughly the past 20 years of Kahn’s career, though creating a retrospective was not top of mind when he and curator Nancy Johnson were selecting which objects to display.
“The curator and I selected works that would enhance the space,” Kahn explains. For example, Kahn chose to set a baby naming chair he created opposite the magnificent sanctuary window by Kiki Smith. This chair wouldn’t be placed in that spot for an actual baby naming ceremony, but Kahn saw a beautiful relationship between the fresh start of a new life, which the chair represents, and the “gorgeous window, looking to the future.” Nearby, Kahn custom-built slender vitrines to fit more small ceremonial objects into the space. The artist meticulously measured the space available and used every inch available to its fullest potential.
Photo by Erin Flynn, Courtesy of the Museum at Eldridge Street
“I wanted this installation to be a dialog between memory and inheritance…because this space has so much memory, the neighborhood has so much memory,” says Kahn. Hence the title of the exhibit, which Kahn credits to his wife, writer Nessa Rapoport. The artist, like the former synagogue and the neighborhood it inhabits, has inherited a rich Jewish and immigrant history. Kahn is a first-generation American descended from German immigrants who were survivors of the Holocaust. His Jewish name comes from his grand-uncle, Arthur Kahn, one of the first Jewish people killed under Hitler’s reign.
Though this Jewish legacy reverberates through the exhibit, people of all faiths, or none, can relate to the works on view. “As an artist, I believe you are a guide rather than a leader in the artistic conversation,” Kahns says, “My wish is that visitors will look at the show more than once, focusing on different paintings and ceremonial objects.”
Among ceremonial pieces like the baby naming chair, mezuzahs, menorahs, and a sculptural Omer counter, an advent-calendar type piece used to mark the 49 days between Passover and Shavuot, visitors will also see a series of Sky and Water paintings, perhaps Kahn’s most well-known works. These paintings feature a blue color known as Tekhelet in the Jewish faith, but this hue and the symbol of water have significance in nearly every belief system. There are also paintings inspired by flowers, a subject that recalls memories of an Ikebana floral arrangement class Kahn took at the Metropolitan Museum of Art with his maternal grandmother when he was a child. The works on view speak to universal human experiences both large and small.
AHDYN by Tobi Kahn
When guests leave the exhibit, Kahn hopes they will “feel better about themselves and the world. There are so many issues confronting us, from climate change to poverty, so many people are now refugees…I want to give people a few minutes to see beauty and see the potential beauty of the world. I believe in giving them enough information to start a story.”
Memory and Inheritance will be on view through November 10, 2024.
Nicole Saraniero is the Insider-in-Chief at Untapped New York, leading our Untapped New York Insiders membership program. Nicole graduated from Hofstra University with a Bachelor of Science in Televis
