routing system maps
HECHT MUSEUM / HAIFA, ISRAEL / GHEZ COLLECTION
In 1978, the noted late Swiss collector, Dr. Oscar Ghez, presented the University of Haifa with 137 works of art by 18 artists who perished in the Holocaust. Founder and president of the Petit Palais Museum in Geneva, Oscar Ghez de Castelnuovo had been collecting art since 1945. His collection represents most European art movements and schools from the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.
Paris was the center of a dramatic artistic revolution unfolding in Europe between the two world wars. Painters, sculptors, writers, and musicians from all over Europe and America were drawn to the French capital; they came to pursue their art amidst a highly charged creative atmosphere in which the now legendary figures of early Modernism were redefining Western Art. Among the artists who gathered there was a significant group of Jewish artists from Central and Eastern Europe. Sharing a common language (Yiddish) and background, Jewish artists (such as those included in the Ghez Collection) gravitated toward one another. Congregating around Montparnasse, they formed a kind of enclave, which came to be known as the Circle of Montparnasse, or the Jewish School of Paris.
In the fall of 2016, my Curating Course at UHaifa had been assigned the task of creating a new exhibition where all 18 Artists of the Ghez collection would have their art on display. Since I was the only designer in the class, I volunteered to create the Routing System Maps for the exhibition. The final designs were 2 include a total of 2 maps: One detailing how all 18 artists arrived into the city of Paris during the 1920's, with the second map showcasing where all 18 artists ended up when fleeing Paris during the Second World War.
A couple of weeks before the semester ended, the budget and time frame for this exhibition was reorganized. It was decided to cancel the exhibition, and instead create a printed catalog. The new deadline for this project was for the Spring of 2017.
Due to the semester coming to an end, my own personal obligations during the academic break, combined with deadlines that I was working toward with other clients--I had to let this project go.
The Oscar Ghez Collection stands not only as a memorial to artists who perished in the Holocaust, but also as an important record documenting the creative output of 18 artists who were part of what has become known as the Jewish School of Paris.
Clearly, Dr. Ghez showed sensitivity and determination in seeking out and drawing together works by these artists. The collection is an invaluable living record of humanity's persistent will to create.
The designs I have selected to display on this page are layouts from my creative process from the first routing system map.
