Christian Boltanski, “Monument (Odessa),” six gelatin silver prints, three tin biscuit boxes, lights, wire, dimensions variable, 1989–2003 (© Christian Boltanski / Courtesy of the Marian Goodman Gallery, New York)
Think Coffee
123 Fourth Ave. between Twelfth & Thirteenth Sts.
Friday, December 12, free, 8:00
www.thejewishmuseum.org
www.thinkcoffee.com
For years, we’ve been fascinated by Christian Boltanski’s “Monument (Odessa),” which is part of the permanent collection of the Jewish Museum. The wall installation consists of six photos of children, surrounded by wires connected to more than two dozen lights, above three rusted tin boxes. It makes one instantly think of the Holocaust, of lighted Yahrzeit remembrances in synagogues, of the six million. However, Boltanski, who was born in France in 1944, has stated, “My work is about the fact of dying, but it’s not about the Holocaust itself.” On Friday, December 12, at 8:00 in the morning, Boltanski, who built a mountain of clothing at the Park Avenue Armory for “No Man’s Land” in 2010 — an immersive work that also evoked the Holocaust — will discuss art, memory, “Monument (Odessa),” and more during the Jewish Museum’s latest downtown edition of “AM at the JM,” a free morning talk, with free java, at Think Coffee by Union Square, hosted by Jens Hoffmann, deputy director of exhibitions and public programs at the Jewish Museum. “A good work of art can never be read in one way. My work is full of contradictions,” Boltanski told Tamar Garb in 1997. “There are many ways of looking at the work. It has to be ‘unfocused’ somehow so that everyone can recognize something of their own self when viewing it.” This coffee klatch should make for quite a heady way to start the day.