Shanghais Jews: Art, Architecture and Survival

Featured is the program Shanghai's Jews: Art, Architecture and Survival which took place March 4, 2010. In it, Nancy Berliner explores the transformation of Shanghai into a multi-cultural, international city, from the middle of the nineteenth century to the middle of the twentieth. Three waves of Jewish immigrants from the Middle East, Russia and Germany discovered in this port city both a hospitable refuge from persecution, and an opportunity to create a new community.

Nancy Berliner is curator of Chinese art at the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Massachusetts, and has curated exhibits of Chinese arts at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and the Yale University Art Gallery, among others. She has lectured at Harvard University, Dartmouth College, the Asia Society of Houston, and the China Institute. She has written for the New York Times, Asian Wall Street Journal, Boston Globe, Asian Art, and American Craft magazines, and is the author of "Yin Yu Tang: The Architecture and Daily Life of a Chinese House", "Beyond the Screen: Chinese Furniture of the 16th and 17th Century", and "Chinese Folk Art".

Co-sponsored by the Asian Art Museum, which is presenting the exhibition Shanghai, through September 15. Also presented in collaboration with the Holocaust Center of Northern California and the American Jewish Committees San Francisco office.