Past

THE SKIRBALL CENTER, NEW YORK, NY
Sunday, April 17, 2016, 10:30 AM

For almost half a century, the Catskills—known lovingly as the Borscht Belt—was a thriving oasis for Jewish vacationers, with grand hotels, lux amenities and headlining entertainment. But affordable air travel to other destinations became available, and suddenly the area was no longer the “go-to” vacation spot. The majestic resorts of “the Jewish Alps,” totally abandoned and exposed to the elements, eroded down to shells of their former glory. The grand resorts are gone, but their impact, memory and place in history are still very much alive. Join us for an afternoon “trip” to the Catskills where: • Photographer Marisa Scheinfeld will present selections from her traveling exhibit and upcoming book entitled The Borscht Belt: Revisiting the Remains of America's Jewish Vacationland featuring photos of the once-dazzling hotels and bungalow colonies. • Filmmaker Lawrence Richards and narrator/comedian Robert Klein will show excerpts from their film, When Comedy Went to School, featuring Catskills comedy legends, followed by a Q&A. • And since no trip to the Catskills is complete without food, a traditional lunch, catered by Russ & Daughters Café, will be served (Borscht included!).

The Temple Emanu-El Skirball Center | One East 65th Street | New York, NY 10065 | (212) 507-9580 | info@emanuelskirballnyc.org

KENISE BARNES FINE ART

Photo 2016: Marisa Scheinfeld, Roger Ricco & Jeffrey Sturges

Exhibition Dates: Saturday, February 20, 2016 - Saturday, April 2, 2016

Opening Reception: Saturday, February 20, 6:30 - 8 PM

Artist Talk: Thursday, March 31, 4:00 pm

Press: What To Do: Westchester Magazine

A Return to the Catskills: Journal News

Kenise Barnes Fine Art is pleased to present its annual photography exhibition: PHOTO ’16. This year’s edition welcomes two new artists to the gallery in addition to Roger Ricco, a gallery veteran and a favorite among our collectors. The gallery is thrilled to debut Marisa Scheinfeld and Jeffrey Sturges in this show. Roger Ricco’s background as a painter has an enormous influence on his photographic vision. Working in rural Woodstock, NY, Ricco finds sources for his work in his own backyard. Bits of nature, stones, shells, flora, feathers and the like are paired with found relics and new objects, and assembled onto tabletop sets. Further transformations are orchestrated by Ricco’s use of painted backdrops, dramatic lighting, and by shooting film through a variety of transparent screens. His humble subjects are reborn in ethereal and dramatic compositions. Ricco was selected to be the Diane Marek Visiting Artist (with exhibition) at the Cress Gallery of the University of Tennessee, Chattanooga. He was awarded The Rome Prize in painting by The American Academy in Rome. His work is in numerous private and public collections, including the Museum of Photographic Art, San Diego, CA.

Marisa Scheinfeld’s large format color photographs chronicle the transformed “Borscht Belt” region in Sullivan County, NY. Just outside New York City, this region was internationally known for its food, recreation, and entertainment, a haven for thousands of mostly Jewish tourists who vacationed in the “mountains.” At its peak, more than five hundred year-round hotels and fifty thousand bungalows were in operation, offering the American Dream with a sense of style and glitz. Scheinfeld’s work uncovers both relic and ruin revealing the now entropic and ghostlike remains of the resort region. In this series, the artist addresses the persistence of time, growth, the flowering, and the exhaustion of things, and the subsequent regeneration; a metaphor for life cycle itself. Scheinfeld has an MFA from San Diego State University. The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, Newsweek, and Hadassah Magazine are among the may publications that have featured Scheinfeld’s work. She is a frequent guest lecturer and her photographs have been exhibited widely throughout the United States. Her book The Borscht Belt: Revisiting the Remains of America’s Jewish Vacationland, Cornell University Press is due out on October 4, 2016.

Please contact the gallery for images, information or to arrange a preview of our exhibitions.

Kenise Barnes Fine Art | 1947 Palmer Avenue | Larchmont, NY 10538 | (914) 834-8077 | Email

Hours: Tuesday - Saturday 10:00 AM - 5:30 PM Evenings available by appointment

LIMMUD 2016 CONFERENCE

Sunday, February 14th, 2016, 3:30 PM

Marisa will present her photographic series on the Borscht Belt at Limmud NY 2016, an annual conference celebrating Jewish learning, diversity and community. Limmud brings together Jews of all ages and backgrounds and seeks to celebrate the rich diversity of Jewish culture, life and learning through art, music, text, study, hands-on workshops, and performances. For more details on this annual conference visit Limmud's website.

VALLEY VARIETY, HUDSON, NY

November 20, 2015 - December 31, 2015

Artist Talk & Reception: Saturday, December 12, 2015 from 5:30 - 8:30

Valley Variety is pleased to presents selections from the traveling exhibition The Borscht Belt. At Valley Variety, eleven works from the series will be on view: ten small scale photographs and one large-scale work. At the talk/reception, guests will be treated to a tasty selection of Eastern European inspired dishes from Savory Delicatessen. Tickets are available and space is limited. Please click visit Valley Variety's website for additional information. Click here to purchase tickets for the artist talk/food event.

Valley Variety | 705 Warren Street | Hudson, NY 12534 Phone: (518) 828-0333 | Email | Website

Hours: 11:00 am - 6:00 pm, 7 days a week

THE NATIONAL YIDDISH BOOK CENTER

Sunday, April 26, 2015 - Sunday, November 22,2015

Exhibition Opening Event: Sunday, April 26

Artist Talk: Sunday, April 26, 11:30 AM

Artist Talk: Sunday, August 2, 2:00 PM

Artist Talk: Sunday, October 25, 10:30 AM

The traveling exhibit Echoes from the Borscht Belt: Contemporary Photographs by Marisa Scheinfeld opens on April 26 at the Yiddish Book Center in Amherst, Massachusetts. The exhibit, which documents the dramatic decline of the resorts of New York’s Catskills region, will be at the Center’s Brechner Gallery through October.

For much of the 20th century the Catskills were a thriving vacation destination, home to hundreds of hotels and motels, from famed high-end resorts such as Grossinger’s and the Concord to modest bungalow colonies. It came to be known as the Borscht Belt because of its popularity with Jews from the New York region, who for years were not welcome at many other vacation spots. In its heyday, the area was known especially for its nightlife, with top comedians and other performers appearing regularly there. Scheinfeld grew up in the Catskills in the 1980s and ’90s, not far from the legendary resorts. By then, however, economic and other factors had sent the region into rapid decline, leading many of the hotels and clubs to close. For the past five years, she’s documented that decline through a series of evocative, sometimes ghostly large-scale images of dozens of empty hotels. Some of the images highlight the stark contrast between the past and present: a row of mint-green stools lined up before a phantom lunch counter that was removed long ago; a formerly grand dining room that local kids have commandeered for paint-gun battles, its tables and bright-pink chairs overturned and streaked with paint. In other images, it’s nature that has assumed control: the moss climbing the walls of a once well-appointed guest room, the ferns growing through the cracked floor of a long-abandoned indoor pool.

“Over time, nature is reclaiming a lot of the hotels,” Scheinfeld says. “The project brought up for me notions about the nature of time and change—what happens not only to people over time, but to the place and space itself.” Echoes from the Borscht Belt will include resort and hotel memorabilia that Scheinfeld has collected over the years as well as selected images from her “re-photographic” series, in which she used promotional shots from the region’s glory days as inspiration for new photos showing the same settings as they look now. “When I started this project, people would say, ‘Why do you want to go in those places? There’s nothing there,’” says Scheinfeld. But to the contrary, she finds the Borscht Belt an ever-evolving landscape that draws her back season after season. “Every time I go back, I don’t know what I’m going to find.”

The Yiddish Book Center also will hold a Borscht Belt Film Festival in conjunction with Echoes from the Borscht Belt, with screenings of the documentary Welcome to Kutsher’s: The Last Catskills Resort (Sunday, May 10, at 11 a.m.), Dirty Dancing (Sunday, May 10, at 2 p.m.), the documentary When Comedy Went to School (Sunday, May 17, at 2 p.m.), and A Walk on the Moon (Sunday, June 7, at 2 p.m.). Echoes from the Borscht Belt: Contemporary Photographs by Marisa Scheinfeld was developed and curated by Yeshiva University Museum.

"TUNE IN" PODCAST: We visit with photographer Marisa Scheinfeld to talk about her work chronicling the ever-evolving landscape of the Borscht Belt. The resulting work, "Echoes from the Borscht Belt: Contemporary Photographs by Marisa Scheinfeld," documents the dramatic decline of the resorts of New Yorkâs Catskills region. The exhibit is on display in the Yiddish Book Center's Brechner Gallery through October 2015.

Episode 100, April 2015, TUNE IN PODCAST: Yiddish Book Center Amherst, Massachusetts

YESHIVA UNIVERSITY MUSEUM, THE CENTER FOR JEWISH HISTORY

OFFICIAL OPENING EVENT: Wednesday, September 10, 2014, 6:30 - 8:30 PM

ARTIST TALK: Wednesday, October 1, 2014 - 6:00 PM

ARTIST TALK: Wednesday, December 10, 2014 - 6:00 PM

ARTIST TALK: Wednesday, January 14, 2015 - 6:00 PM

ARTIST TALK: Wednesday, February 11, 2015 - 6:00 PM

ARTIST TALK: Wednesday, March 11, 2015 - 6:00 PM

Echoes from the Borscht Belt: Contemporary Photographs by Marisa Scheinfeld is now on view at Yeshiva University Museum at the Center for Jewish History from August 3, 2014 - April 12, 2015. From the 1920s through the 1960s, the Catskill Mountains, within easy driving distance of New York City, were a popular vacation destination for millions of Americans, many of them Jews. Known as the Borscht Belt, the resorts of Sullivan and Ulster County combined recreational activities with nighttime entertainment, especially stand-up comedy, which was born in the region's theaters and showrooms. At its peak during the post-WW II era, the region known as the Borscht Belt sustained more than six hundred year-round hotels, as well as over a thousand bungalow colonies and summer camps. In this series of beautiful, richly textured, large-scale photographs, Marisa Scheinfeld documents the dramatic degradation of some of the most famous Borscht Belt hotels. The images reveal ghostly remnants of the glory years of the era, as well as powerful evidence of nature's claim on the resorts and their landscapes, and new uses to which the spaces have been put in recent years. Scheinfeld, who grew up in the region, began her documentary photo project in 2009; this exhibition marks the first time audiences can see her work on the large scale on which it was conceived. Echoes is complemented by original memorabilia and photographs from some of the Borscht Belt's most beloved hotels and resorts.

ADDITIONAL EVENTS:

FILM SCREENING & OPEN GALLERY WITH THE PHOTOGRAPHER: Monday, February 2, 2015 at 6:00 PM

Join comedian, singer and actor Robert Klein for a Q&A following a screening of the film When Comedy Went to School and preceding the program, a gallery viewing with Marisa Scheinfeld. Tickets: $8, $6 for senior, students, CJH and YUM members through SmartTix. Open Gallery at 6 PM, Film Screening at 7PM.

PANEL DISCUSSION: THE BORSCHT BELT - PAST, PRESENT & FUTURE: Thursday, March 26, 2015 at 6:00 pm

Once the playground of American Jews, many of the hotels and resorts of the Catskill Mountains – aka the Borscht Belt – are now almost completely in ruins, their potential use and adaptation ever shifting. Join historian and Forward columnist Jenna Weissman Joselit and photographer Marisa Scheinfeld for a lively discussion of the remarkable history, enduring legacy and uncertain future of this Jewish American institution. This program complements Yeshiva University Museum’s exhibition Echoes of the Borscht Belt: Contemporary Photographs by Marisa Scheinfeld. 6:00 pm: Gallery viewing with the photographer 7:00 pm: Panel discussion, followed by Q&A Tickets $8; $6 for students, seniors and YUM members Register through SmartTix.

WAMC ROUNDTABLE

Listen here

OR HERE:

Photographer Marisa Scheinfeld grew up in New York’s Catskills region, not far from its legendary resorts of the Borscht Belt, a name derived from the area’s popularity with Jews from the New York region who for years were not welcome at many other vacation spots. For much of the 20th century the Borscht Belt was a thriving vacation destination, home to hundreds of hotels and motels, from famed high-end resorts such as Grossinger’s and the Concord to modest bungalow colonies. In its heyday, the area was known especially for its nightlife, with top comedians and other performers appearing regularly there. By the time Scheinfeld was growing up there in the 1980s and ‘90s, however, economic and other factors had sent the region into rapid decline, leading many of the hotels and clubs to close. For the past five years, Scheinfeld has documented that decline through a series of evocative, sometimes ghostly large-scale images of dozens of empty hotels.

WAMC's The Roundtable is an award-winning, nationally recognized eclectic talk program. The show airs from 9am to noon each weekday and features news, interviews, in-depth discussion, listener call-ins, music, and much (much) more! Hosted by Joe Donahue and produced by Sarah LaDuke, The Roundtable tackles serious and lighthearted subjects, looking to explore the many facets of the human condition with civility, respect and responsibility.

Wednesday, April 29, 2015 at 6:30 PM

Tenement Talks presents: The Stories of Ruins

Watch the Tenement Talk below or on You Tube by clicking here.

The chipping paint, peeling wallpaper, and threadbare linoleum floors of 97 Orchard are more than relics of long ago. They are evocative of life lived and illuminate the stories and events of the past. In an appreciation of ruins Andrew Dolkart, director of Columbia’s historic preservation program, Katherine Malone-France, of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, and Christopher Payne, photographer of North Brother Island: The Last Unknown Place in New York City, and Marisa Scheinfeld who documented abandoned resorts in the Catskills Borscht Belt, gather to discuss the significance of these spaces. This event is free and seating is first-come, first-served. Doors will open at 6pm. For more information visit the Tenement Museum's website.

Tenement Museum | 102 Orchard Street | New York, NY 10002 | (212) 982-8420| Email

JEWISH ARTIST SALON SESSION
October 17th, 2013, 6:00 - 9:00 PM

Jewish Art Salon Session at the Synagogue for the Arts in Tribeca in conjunction with an opening reception for artists Yona Verwer and Heather Stoltz. The event runs from 6:00 pm - 9:00 pm and is open to the public, however an RSVP is required to: jewishartsalon@gmail.com

Schedule of Events:

6-7 PM Opening Reception Art Exhibit "City Charms & Sewing Stories" by Heather Stoltz and Yona Verwer.

7-8 PM Artists Presentation by Jewish Art Salon members: Marisa Scheinfeld, Linda Soberman & Heather Stoltz.

8-9 PM Meet the Artists

Synagogue For The Arts Gallery | Jewish Art Salon

LOWER EAST SIDE JEWISH CONSERVANCY

Sunday, May 5, 2013 - Sunday, October 27, 2013

Small-scale exhibition at the Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy (LESJC) Kling & Niman Family Visitor Center. On August 11, 2013 at 11:00 am, Scheinfeld will be giving a lecture at the Lower East Side Jewish Conservancy's Kling & Niman Family Visitor Center 400 Grand St. (bet Clinton & Suffolk Sts.), New York, NY. An additional artist talk to accompany the exhibition will take place on Sunday, May 5, 2013 at 2:00 pm in conjunction with the LESJC's 4th Jewish Heritage Festival, an activity-packed day of exploring and learning about the Jewish history of Manhattan's Lower East Side.

LESJC - Kling & Niman Visitor Center 400 Grand Street New York, NY 10002

12th Annual Catskills Preservation and History Conference

Saturday, July 13 from 12:00 pm - 8:00pm

A presentation of The Borscht Belt: A Contemporary History in Images from Rise to Relic will occur at the 12th Annual Catskills Preservation & History Conference on Saturday, July 13 from 12:00 pm - 8:00pm at The Liberty Museum and Arts Center at 46 South Main St. Liberty, New York 12754.

The Conference topic will be “The Great Catskill Resorts,” and will explore the history, the architecture, and the future of the great Catskill's Resorts. Speakers include: Photographer, Marisa Scheinfeld; Sullivan County historian and author, John Conway; Architectural historian and author, Ross Paduck; Journalist and Author, Barry Lewis; and Architect, Robert Dadras.

Cost: $20.00 for Conference $25.00 for Architectural Tour $40.00 for both Free for all Liberty Museum & Arts Center members.

For more information call 845-292-2394 or email lmac@libertymuseum.com or visit http://catskills.brown.edu/

Summer Lecture Series at Monticello Public Library

July 11, 2013

Public talk and discussion scheduled for Thursday, July 11th, 2013 at 7:30 PM.

The Ethelbert B. Crawford Public Library | 393 Broadway | Monticello, NY 12701 | Phone: (845) 794-4660

Press: Article on Lecture from The Times Herald Record entitled "Photographer to present 'Borscht Belt' program,"

Sid Jacobson Jewish Community Center

April 28 - June 30, 2013

The Ruins of the Borscht Belt will be on display from April 28 - June 30, 2013 in the Edward & Bernice Wenger Center for the Arts at the Sid Jacobson Jewish Community Center in East Hills, NY. Sid Jacobson Jewish Community Center 300 Forest Drive East Hills, NY 11548 www.sjjcc.org

92 Street Y

December 11, 2012 – January 14, 2013

Opening reception on December 18, 2012 from 5:00 - 6:45 PM

Milton J. Weill Art Gallery at the 92 Street Y

92nd Street Y 1395 Lexington Avenue New York, New York 10128

Midwest Center for Photography

A selection from the series will be on view at the Midwest Center for Photography from May 25 - July 13, 2012 in an exhibition entitled "Grow." Center Gallery at the Midwest Center for Photography 111 Ellis | Wichita, Kansas 67211 316-269-1250 | info@centergalleryonline.com Gallery Hours: Final Friday Opening Receptions: 7:00 - 10:00 p.m. Fridays, 12:00 noon - 6:00 p.m. Also by appointment

Ben Uri Gallery at The London Jewish Museum of Art

A selection from the series will be on view in the International Jewish Artist of the Year Exhibition at the Ben Uri Gallery at The London Jewish Museum of Art from May 9 - May 29, 2012. 108A Boundary Road | Off Abbey Road St Johns Wood London NW8 0RH Tel: 020 7604 3991 | Fax: 020 7604 3992 Opening hours: Mon-Fri: 10am-5.30pm | Sun: 12-4 PM - closed Saturdays

PHOTOWORKS

December 9, 2011 - January 22, 2012

Artist Talk: Saturday, December 10, 2011, 3:00 - 3:30 pm

Photoworks is pleased to present Leftover Borscht by Marisa Scheinfeld. The series, a contemporary view of the ruins of the Borscht Belt in Upstate New York, was Scheinfeld’s MFA project and thesis exhibition. She grew up in the area and has made seasonal visits back to the region to document its current state of decay.

Gallery Hours: Saturdays, 1-4 pm and Sundays, 1-8 pm

THE SKIRBALL CENTER, NEW YORK, NYSunday, April 17, 2016, 10:30 AM