At a meeting of Jewish leaders in Washington yesterday, Menachem Rosensaft, an official of the Holocaust Memorial Museum and founding chairman of the International Network of Children of Holocaust Survivors, called for Jewish groups to boycott New York’s Jewish Museum because of its upcoming exhibit, “Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art.” The exhibit will open March 17. It features a number of controversial works that has upset many Jews.
Catholic League president William Donohue urged Catholics to join the boycott today:
“Usually, it’s Catholics whom the ‘creative types’ in the artistic community like to offend. Now it’s Jews.
“There is nothing creative about ‘designer’ poison-gas canisters, Lego concentration camp sets, digitally altered pictures of a photographer holding a Diet Coke amidst Buchenwald inmates, toylike Hitler cats and handsome busts of that monster Josef Mengele. This is the kind of expression we might expect from some tongue-pierced adolescent hell-bent on a Columbine-styled rampage. It is not what we would expect from legitimate artists. Worse, we would expect that the venue for such rage would be some gallery in the East Village and not a prestigious museum. Moreover, we also object to the cover of the exhibit’s catalog that features a cross morphing into a swastika.
“Dialogue is not the answer. A boycott is. Catholics should take this opportunity to join with their Jewish brothers and sisters and send a message to the officials at the Jewish Museum by joining the boycott triggered by Menachem Rosensaft. Anything that trivializes the Holocaust is offensive and ‘Mirroring Evil’ clearly meets that test.”
