Sculpting a Life: Chana Orloff during Occupation, Escape, Exile, Return (1938-1949), 10/23/2024

In this presentation, University of San Francisco professor and author Paula J. Birnbaum explores the life and work of Chana Orloff (1888-1968), the Ukrainian-born French sculptor who demonstrated perseverance and endured tremendous sacrifices during World War II. Against the resonant backdrop of world wars and a life of forced migrations, her sculptures embody themes of gender, displacement, exile, and belonging. A major figure in the School of Paris, Orloff contributed to the canon of modern art alongside Picasso, Modigliani and Chagall. Professor Birnbaum analyzes Orloff’s life and work during the tumultuous years leading up to the War and its aftermath (1938-1949), to show how she used her art as a form of both survival and healing from trauma.

Paula J. Birnbaum is the inaugural Ann Getty Endowed Chair and Professor of Arts History and Museum Studies and the founding director of at the Museum Studies Master of Arts Program and University of San Francisco. She is a specialist in modern and contemporary art and holds a doctorate in Art History from Bryn Mawr College. Birnbaum is a former Fulbright Scholar in France and fellow at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Stanford University.

Her research focuses on modern and contemporary art in relationship to gender and sexuality, as well as institutional and social politics in museum exhibitions. She is the author of, among other works, Sculpting a Life: Chana Orloff between Paris and Tel Aviv (Brandeis University Press, 2022), Women Artists in Interwar France (Routledge, 2011; 2016) and the co-edited anthology Essays on Women’s Artistic and Cultural Contributions 1919-1939 (Edwin Mellen, 2009). Paula is a regular contributor to scholarly journals and museum exhibition catalogs exploring the role of gender and sexuality in modernism.

This event is part of the online series “Flight or Fight. stories of artists under repression” organized by The Fritz Ascher Society for Persecuted, Ostracized and Banned Art in New York.
You can find other presentations in this series @fritzaschersociety1130.
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