Jewish identity – Art Spiel

In Dialogue with Caron Tabb

*Caron Tabb, Justice Vessels: Tzedakah Box For Tina (2021), Scorched tree branches, stainless steel, wool roving, thread, 16 x 16 x 22 inches. Photo credit Julia Featheringill.*

In Humanity Is Not A Spectator Sport, on view at Beacon Gallery in Boston from November 5th 2021 through January 17th, 2022 (sponsored in conjunction with JArts), Caron Tabb draws upon her expertise in multiple media to create works meant to provoke and inspire. She leans into the tensions that have characterized the recent past to question her role and culpability as a White woman; where inaction itself is a statement. The exhibition offers an intimately visual response to Tabb’s personal reckoning along with a wealth of programming focused on sparking difficult conversations about race and privilege as well as presenting opportunities to take action. As the exhibition entered its final weeks, I asked Tabb to reflect on some of the conversations the exhibition inspired.

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Meryl Meisler studied photography at the University of Wisconsin, and with Lisette Model in New York where she began to capture the city’s street life and infamous nightlife. A 1978 C.E.T.A. Artist Grant supported her portfolio on Jewish identity, after which she began a three-decade career as a NYC public school art teacher. Upon retirement, she began releasing large bodies of previously unseen work, including two books, A Tale of Two Cities: Disco Era Bushwick, and Purgatory & Paradise SASSY ‘70s Suburbia & The City. She is currently working on her next monograph, New York PARADISE LOST Bushwick Era Disco, and is represented by CLAMPART.