Travel the World… Without Leaving the Studio

A blog post by Director of Collections and Exhibits Joanna Church. To read more posts by Joanna click HERE.

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Throughout August, we’ve showcased travel: from correspondence, to Grace Hecht’s ongoing diaries, to opportunities to explore the collections and histories of Jewish museums around the world. It’s been fun, but it’s hard not to forget that for the most part, for many of us, travel has become extremely restricted, if not off the table altogether. Virtual backgrounds for online meetings are about as close as some of us can get right now to experiencing a change of scenery.

Those Zoom backdrops, showing everything from your favorite vacation spot to your actual (in normal circumstances) place of work to the outer reaches of the galaxy, have been reminding me of the painted scenery that can be found in postcards and photo portraits of a century ago. Granted, those “here I am… kind of!” images were usually due to the limitations of photographic technology, not to restricted travel – people were often photographed in front of a facsimile of a place that was just a few steps outside the studio’s doors – but all the same, there’s a certain similarity of spirit to them, an interest in documenting (or fabricating) the surroundings you want to be in, even if only in imagination.

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