A second life in the museum: Jewish tombstones after the Black Death

You are invited to a research seminar co-hosted by the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies and Centre for Jewish Studies, with speaker Dr Eva Frojmovic.

Across Europe, Jewish communities were decimated in advance of the Black Death (Yersinia Pestis) epidemic of 1347-9; their communal buildings and cemeteries were expropriated. The looting and recycling of Jewish tombstones has been interpreted variously, between pragmatic building material and symbolic appropriation.

In this paper, Eva Frojmovic looks at 19th- and 20th- century musealisation of tombstones. The aim of the paper is to discern changing understandings of their educational purpose.

The main case study will be Basel. Eva’s proposition: that their educational use focuses on the history of medieval Jewish communities more than on the process of looting, and that the gradual transfer of Jewish tombstones from public institutions to Jewish museums has the effect of decontaminating potentially contentious heritage.

About the speaker

Eva Frojmovic is Associate Professor in the School of Fine Art, History of Art and Cultural Studies and Director of the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Leeds. Her research circles the intersection between Jewish studies, art history, medieval studies, museums and heritage, and postcolonial and gender theories.

More information

This seminar is free to attend and all are welcome.

Please register here if you would like to attend.

For more details, please email Ross Truscott at R.Truscott@leeds.ac.uk.

Image

Vitrine at the Jewish Museum of Switzerland, Basel. Reproduced with permission.