Cindy Sherman to receive Jewish Museum’s Man Ray Award

Cindy Sherman became Lucille Ball in this silver gelatin print dated 1975/2001. Image courtesy Wittlin & Serfer Auctioneers and LiveAuctioneers Archive.

NEW YORK- The Jewish Museum will present photographer Cindy Sherman with a special award for her distinguished accomplishments in advancing understanding of the limitless possibilities of identity and the profound impact of her work on the contemporary art world. Sherman will receive the Jewish Museum’s Man Ray Award at a celebratory event Tuesday evening, Nov. 17.

Event attendees will view the new exhibition Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention. This award underscores the museum’s continuing commitment to the art and artists of the avant-garde, who, in the spirit of Man Ray and Cindy Sherman, explore issues of identity through their creative work.

Anticipated attendees include David Byrne, the musician who co-founded the group Talking Heads, and actress Gaby Hoffman.

Working as her own model for more than 30 years, Cindy Sherman has developed an extraordinary relationship with her camera. A remarkable performer, Sherman is able to drastically manipulate her age and weight leaving the artist unrecognizable to the audience. Her works range from alarming and distasteful to amusing and poignant. Shooting alone in her studio, Sherman acts as author, director, actor, makeup artist, hairstylist and wardrobe mistress. Sherman’s work has been widely collected and exhibited by major museums throughout the world since 1980 and is the subject of numerous monographs. She was born in Glen Ridge, N.J., in 1954 and attended State University College at Buffalo, N.Y., receiving a B.A. in 1976. Sherman lives in New York City.

The Jewish Museum combines art and Jewish culture in collections, exhibitions and education programs, with art and artifacts from ancient times to the present. Now in its 105th year, the museum is both the touchstone of Jewish identity and an internationally acclaimed art museum.

A trailblazing figure in 20th-century art, Man Ray (1890-1976) revealed multiple artistic identities over the course of his career – Dadaist, Parisian Surrealist, international portrait and fashion photographer – and produced many important and enduring works as a photographer, painter, filmmaker, writer, sculptor, and object maker. Relatively few people know that he was born Emmanuel Radnitzky to Russian Jewish immigrants.

The Jewish Museum is presenting Alias Man Ray: The Art of Reinvention through March 14. The exhibition examines how the artist’s life and career were shaped by his turn-of-the-century American Jewish immigrant experience and his lifelong evasion of his past.

The exhibition explores the deliberate cultural ambiguity of Man Ray, who became the first American artist to be accepted by the avant-garde in Paris. It also examines the dynamic connection between Man Ray’s assimilation, the evolution of his art, and his willful construction of a distinctive artistic persona, as evidenced in a series of subtle, encrypted self-references throughout his career. Visitors to the exhibition will be privy to the artist’s endless experimentation in more than 200 works including photographs, paintings, sculptures and objects, drawings, films and a selection of his writings.

As the first major multimedia Man Ray show in a New York City museum since 1974, the exhibition will present many iconic works like the photographs Le Violon d’Ingres (1924) and Noire et Blanche (1926); the paintings War (A.D. MCMXIV) (1914), The Rope Dancer Accompanies Herself with Her Shadows (1915-16) and La Fortune (1938); and the painted screen La Fôret Dorée de Man Ray (1950).

Those interested in purchasing tickets to the event may call 212-423-3278. Tickets range from $250 to $750. A $750 ticket includes a visit with Cindy Sherman in her studio on March 18.

ADDITIONAL IMAGES OF NOTE

Photographer and award recipient Cindy Sherman. Photo by Mark Seliger.