On Sunday, January 6, at 8:00 p.m., Cong. Rinat Yisrael Adult Education Presents

“Lost & Found: Adventures of a Family Photo Album Rescued From the Holocaust” with Jacob Wisse, director, Yeshiva University Museum.

This multimedia presentation explores the remarkable history of a family photo album that was assembled in the decades before World War II, smuggled out of the wartime Kovno ghetto by its Jewish creator, hidden for three generations by a non-Jewish Lithuanian family, re-discovered and, after sleuthing spanning multiple continents, returned in 2016 to the family’s descendants. The album’s photographs evoke the rich Jewish cultural life that flourished in the urban centers of Eastern Europe between the wars. The re-discovery of the album and of the lives of the people depicted in it shed light on the important role of photography in strengthening family bonds and preserving memories for future generations.

Jacob Wisse is director of the Yeshiva University Museum and associate professor of art history at Stern College for Women. A Montreal native, he earned his BA from McGill University and his MA and PhD from the Institute of Fine Arts of New York University, where he specialized in late Medieval and Renaissance art and architecture. He earned a Curatorial Studies Certificate from The Metropolitan Museum of Art, where he was twice awarded the Theodore Rousseau Curatorial Fellowship. His book “City Painters in the Burgundian Netherlands” is to be published next year by Brepols Press. This talk is based on an exhibition that Wisse co-curated at the Yeshiva University Museum that is on view until April 28, 2019.