Sunday Stories: Victorian Leisure, Pleasure, and Folly

As industrialism took hold in the 1800s, Victorians gained more time for leisure. Their activities, which took advantage of the cutting-edge technology of the time, provide fascinating glimpses into the minds of the era’s eccentrics. Join us for this Sunday Story as we explore the strange delights and social codes of nineteenth-century Victorians in the United States.

Los Angeles-based artist Stephen Berkman’s immersive photography installation is a tribute to Shimmel Zohar, a mythical nineteenth-century Jewish immigrant photographer, founder of Zohar Studios. The exhibition includes over thirty photographs, several large installations, a cabinet of curiosities, and a large format artist book about the Zohar project. These uncanny photographs take the visual codes of nineteenth-century portraiture as their point of departure, and the images and objects address both Jewish life and the scientific state of understanding over one hundred years ago. Together, they create an idiosyncratic vision of Victorian life in the United States, revitalizing bygone technologies and themes within a twenty-first century context. Through his work, Berkman shows that history is malleable and contains a multiplicity of meanings.

Predicting the Past: Zohar Studios, The Lost Years is organized by The Contemporary Jewish Museum. Leadership support is generously provided by Maribelle and Stephen Leavitt, The Bernard Osher Foundation, and the John Pritzker Family Fund. Major support is provided by Anonymous, Joyce B. Linker, and Dorothy R. Saxe.

Media Sponsorship is provided by the San Francisco Chronicle.