The New Art Examiner
Spertus Museum
October 1994

Bridges & Boundaries, Chicago Crossings
by Andrew Patner

Even at its opening, where hip denizens of the art world and overall‑clad exhibit preparators mingled with black‑hatted Hasidic Jews and dreadlocked African-Americans, "Bridges and Boundaries: Chicago Crossings," an artistic dialogue on Black‑Jewish relations, announced that it would go beyond the normal museum fare. "Chicago Crossings" accomplished a rare success in its effort to link political and historical issues to contemporary artistic expression. Working in a wide variety of media, 12 Chicago‑area artists -‑ six American Jews and six African‑Americans created pieces that, for the most part, were challenging philosophically and successful aesthetically. Co‑curated by African American artist and teacher Othello Anderson and Jewish artist and writer Claire Wolf Krantz, the show was organized by the Museum of the Spertus Institute of Judaica in conjunction with the arrival of the controversial touring exhibition "Bridges and Boundaries: African Americans and American Jews" at the Chicago Historical Society.

The show's strongest pieces included Holocaust survivor Edith Altman's devastating multi‑media installation, "How Shall We Teach Our Children?" Here, Altman combined videotaped questions asked by black and Jewish children with placards and signage positing the artist's own questioning of historic texts. Black painter John Rozelle's heavily worked canvases deal in abstracted terms with the death of civil‑rights worker James Chaney, the contrasts between Jewish labor struggles and African-American chattel slavery, and even the conflict between the kosher requirements of the Passover table and the makings of a soul-food barbecue. Kerry James Marshall took on the reinterpretation of African and African‑American history and Jewish symbolism, tracing the Star of David from its presence on a Nazi badge to its use as a symbol for a powerful black street gang on Chicago's South Side. Curator Anderson's own piece, A Tribute to An American Scientist, offered a surprising patriotism, so unfashionable in today's art circles.

An accompanying documentary-in-process by Kartemquin Films illustrated both the collaborative and individual labors of the artists. In the video, John Pittman Weber, muralist and co‑founder of the Chicago Public Art Group, demonstrates the non-dogmatic nature of the effort when he tells the camera that the project forced him to confront his Jewish identity "in some ways for the first time."

Claire Wolf Krantz is an artist, freelance critic, and guest curator.
As an artist she works in a combination of painting and photography as well as digitally created images.