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Author Maurice Sendak Selects Menorahs for Jewish Museum Show

By Amy Zimmer | December 2, 2011 9:21am
A menorah from eastern Galicia or western Ukraine, 1895.
A menorah from eastern Galicia or western Ukraine, 1895.
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The Jewish Museum

MANHATTAN — Maurice Sendak, author of the beloved children's classic, "Where the Wild Things Are," sifted through the Jewish Museum's foremost collection of more than 1,000 menorahs for a new holiday exhibition at the Fifth Avenue arts space.

He selected 33 of them for "An Artist Remembers: Hanukkah Lamps Selected by Maurice Sendak," which opens Friday and runs through Jan. 29, 2012. The show includes the illustrator's reflections on the process of picking the holiday fixtures.

The vast number of menorahs — many of which came from the pre-World War II world of his Eastern European Jewish parents — made Sendak think of loss and destruction, curators Susan Braunstein and Claudia Nahson said.

"I stayed away from everything elaborate. I kept looking for very plain, square ones, very severe looking," Sendak told the Jewish Museum. "Their very simplicity reminded me of the Holocaust. And I thought it was inappropriate for me to be thinking of elaboration."

One of his selections was a menorah made in 1945 in a displaced-persons camp in Germany at the end of the war, dedicated to U.S. Gen. Joseph McNarney, who they hailed as their liberator.

Senday responded to that menorah with a sense of anger at the Holocaust, leading him "to look for shapes that are inspired by that feeling, that emotion. Anything beyond that doesn't make it for me."

Sendak told the museum that his parents "loved" the menorah — traditionally lit during the eight days of the "Festival of Lights," as Hannukah is called — but didn't actually light its candles.

"I think on coming to America, they dropped the whole business of being Jews in the European sense," he told the museum. "I think the life was so tough, there was no sentiment."  

The curators noted that Sendak also brought his characteristic sense of humor to the task, rummaging while he "free associated, whimsically recalling old movies and Catskills family vacations."

Several of his selections include menorahs that include lions, which are a common motif in his own art. The show also includes two of his drawings for "Zlateh the Goat and Other Stories," from 1966, and "In Grandpa's House," from 1985.

"We hope that visitors will be moved in various ways by the lamps," Braunstein and Nahson said.

"For Maurice Sendak, they are powerful repositories of memory, embodying stories that illuminate the past for new generations," the two added. "The lamps speak to us of their survival through time and of the people that once made or owned them."

In all, the museum at 1109 Fifth Ave., at 92nd Street, has nearly 100 menorahs currently on display throughout the building. There are four in "Postmodernist Hannukah: Designs from the 1980s," and nearly 60 more from the 17th century through 2000 as part of a show called "Culture and Continuity."

The public is invited to share its reflections on the menorahs on a board set up at Sendak's show. The Jewish Museum will post selected memories on its website.

Hanukkah begins at sundown on Tues., Dec. 20, and continues until sundown on Weds., Dec. 28.