Art, Ritual, Community

Our Journey with A Wandering Sukkah

Sunday, September 22, 2019 at 1:00 pm

Speakers: Danielle Durchslag and Ryan Frank

Buy Tickets Now (JMM Members – Reserve Your Seats) 

In 2015, artists Danielle Durchslag and Ryan Frank created A Wandering Sukkah, a colorful, skyscraper-inspired sukkah for all New Yorkers, installed on the back of a pickup truck that toured the five boroughs of New York City during Sukkot. Over 700 New Yorkers of all backgrounds experienced A Wandering Sukkah at ten different locations across the city. Hosts included the Jewish Museum, the Bronx Museum of the Arts, the Jewish Theological Seminary, and the Hindu Society of North America. A Wandering Sukkah received press from both Jewish and secular publications, including The New York Observer, Hyperallergic, and The Forward.

This fall Durchslag and Frank, a Jew and non-Jew, will visit the Jewish Museum of Maryland in downton Baltimore to discuss their experience of creating and sharing A Wandering Sukkah with New York City. The artists will discuss the myriad responses to the structure, exploring how people ranging from the completely uninitiated to the ultra-orthodox regarded and interacted with the project. The artists will discuss what lead them to create this singular installation, and share photos and video from their Wandering Sukkah journey. Durchslag and Frank will talk about the impacts of the project on their relationships to ritual and their individual art practices.

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About the Artists

Danielle Durchslag

Danielle Durchslag is an artist and filmmaker based in Brooklyn, NY.  She has exhibited throughout the United States, including solo exhibitions at Denny Gallery and Yale University.  Her work has shown at venues including The Jewish Museum, the Toronto Shorts International Film Festival, the Invisible Dog Art Center, The Queens Museum, Winkleman Gallery, The Bronx Museum, Foley Gallery, The Ackland Art Museum, and the Wassaic Project.  Danielle’s work has been discussed in Photograph Magazine, Clarion Content, The Huffington Post, Hyperallergic, and The New York Observer, among others.  She studied at Wellesley, The Museum School of Fine Arts Boston, and New York University. www.danielledurchslag.com / @ddurch

Ryan Frank

Ryan Frank is a New York based artist and curator, a native of California and a graduate of New York University. Ryan’s work is a unique blend of photography and sculpture through a variety of forms including light boxes, windows and large-scale installation. He’s had solo exhibitions at the Invisible Dog Art Center, the Mattatuck Museum, the Children’s Museum of the Arts and the Lilac Preservation Project and has exhibited his work at venues including The Wassaic Project, Latchkey Gallery, Art-in-Buildings and the Dumbo Arts Festival. Ryan has attended residencies at Jentel Foundation, Brush Creek Foundation for the Arts, SIM Iceland and Brooklyn Studios for Dance. His curatorial projects include Used Books at Winkleman Gallery, Reflective Landscape at The Granary, A Very Anxious Feeling at the Mattatuck Museum and I Like the Sound of That at Artspace New Haven.  ryanmfrank.com / @ryanmfrank

This program was made possible through the generous support of The Kaplan-Kronsberg Family Charitable Fund.