The Sisterhood of Congregation Emanu El's Judaism Through the Arts

The Sisterhood of Congregation Emanu El invites the community to Judaism Through the Arts. Alison de Lima Greene, the Isabel Brown Wilson Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art, will be speaking about the art and life of Tamara de Lempicka. This sneak preview of an upcoming March 2025 exhibition, Tamara de Lempicka, features the art of de Lempicka who took Paris by storm in the 1920s with portraits, nude figure studies and still life paintings that united classicism and high modernism to create some of the most defining works of the Art Deco era.
 
De Lempicka, born Tamara Rosa Hurwitz 1894 in Poland in an era of fierce anti-Semitism, learned at an early age to conceal her Jewish ancestry. Following her marriages to Tadeusz Lempicka and Baron Raoul Kuffner, she entered the circles of Polish and Hungarian aristocracy, before being forced to flee Europe in 1939. She settled at first in New York and Los Angeles, then in Houston in the 1960s. Curator Alison de Lima Greene will introduce the major themes of the exhibition and how the many guises de Lempicka assumed throughout her life are reflected in her artwork. 

Linda Zoll, the founder of this program with the MFAH, will be honored. The ongoing dynamic program, Judaism Through the Arts, was the brainchild of Linda Zoll, when she was one of the program chairs for the Sisterhood of Congregation Emanu El.  Inspired by lectures at the Women’s Institute and Rice University, Linda was motivated to forge a connection between visual arts, music and Jewish culture. She worked closely with Margaret Mimms, Program Manager at the Museum of Fine Arts, Houston (MFAH) in 2007 and beyond to bring engaging voices about that relationship to audiences in various halls at the MFAH. With the help of many “sisters” from Emanu El’s Sisterhood and the generous help from Dr. Helga Aurich, Curator of European Art at the MFAH, the series was born.  

Please RSVP by Jan. 15, either online here or through the Sisterhood office at 713-529-5771, ext. 233. There is a late fee of $5 for registration after Jan. 15.