Listen The Kibitz

The False Lens of History

Season 2 Episode 9

December 12, 2017

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Maya Benton

Curator at the International Center of Photography

Maya Benton is a curator at the International Center of Photography in New York, where she has worked since 2008. She has curated numerous traveling exhibitions, lectures widely, and is a frequent contributor to magazines and museum catalogs, where she writes about museums, photography, Israeli art, and Jewish visual and material culture.

Maya’s 2013 exhibition, Roman Vishniac Rediscovered, is traveling internationally through 2022. The show was heralded as a “revelation” by The New Yorker, ARTnews, TIME, The Financial Times and The Economist, and was praised in more than 300 international press outlets. The catalogue was named Finalist for the National Jewish Book Award, and the Krauszna-Krause Book Award, Europe’s top prize for photography books. She is also the author of the French monograph, Roman Vishniac. Her 2011 exhibition, Ruth Gruber: Photojournalist, is traveling through 2018.

Maya is organized Southern Rites, a traveling exhibition of photographer Gillian Laub’s contemporary images of racially segregated proms and homecoming rituals in the American South. Southern Rites examinesd the legacy of segregation and racially motivated violence through the experiences of African American teenagers.

She is a graduate of Brown University, Harvard University and the Courtauld Institute of Art in London.

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Eddy Portnoy

Senior Academic Advisory and Director of Exhibitions at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research

Eddy Portnoy is a specialist on Yiddish popular culture. He currently serves as academic advisor for the Max Weinreich Center and exhibition curator at the YIVO Institute for Jewish Research. The exhibitions he has created for YIVO have won plaudits from The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, VICE, The Forward, and others. He is the author of Bad Rabbi and Other Strange but True Stories from the Yiddish Press (Stanford University Press 2017).

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Jessica Chaffin

Actress, comedian, and writer

Jessica Chaffin is a writer/performer, Emmy-Nominated Consulting Producer on HBO’s Hacks, and host of the popular podcast ASK RONNA.

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Dan Crane

Host of The Kibitz

Dan Crane is a journalist, musician, Jew (lax, loves lox) and retired professional air-guitarist. He writes about culture and travel for the New York TimesWall Street JournalCalifornia SundaySlate, and numerous other publications. He’s the author of “To Air is Human” and stars in the documentary, Air Guitar Nation.