The House of Fragile Things: Jewish Art Collectors and the Fall of France

The Benjamin (Yale 1962) and Barbara Zucker Lecture Series
In the dramatic years between 1870 and the end of World War II, a number of prominent French Jews—pillars of an embattled community—invested their fortunes in France’s cultural artifacts, sacrificed their sons to the country’s army, and were ultimately rewarded by seeing their collections plundered and their families deported to Nazi concentration camps. This talk explores the central role that art and material culture played in the assimilation and identity of French Jews in the fin-de-siècle.