‘Echoes’ Of Dutch Anti-Semitism, Then And Now

JEWISH WEEK
By Sandee Brawarsky

Images from Yona Verwer’s mixed-media work “Echoes,” colored kippot. YU Museum

Artist Yona Verwer has created a triptych that’s old and new, in all ways. Titled “Echoes,” the theme is anti-Semitism, past and present, in her native Netherlands. She partners with Polish-born artist Katarzyna Kozera — both are now New Yorkers — and musicologist Dan Schwartz, to create a series of three linked paintings, on view at the Yeshiva University Museum. “If you wear a kipa now, you can expect to be yelled at and to have things thrown at you,” Verwer, co-founder of the Jewish Art Salon, tells The Jewish Week. She explains that these bright kippot are “nothing that the Dutch would ever wear, but a symbol that Jews are alive.” The exhibition, on view in the Education Showcase on the main floor of the Yeshiva University Museum at the Center for Jewish History, 15 W. 16th St., runs through Jan. 16. [More]