Museum Piece ...
The Borscht Belt:
A Large-Scale Sculptured Environment Celebrating the
Catskills
This exhibition/installation in progress represents a collaboration between
The Catskills Institute and the Revolving Museum. Boston's Revolving Museum is
an artist-run, project-driven organization which is committed to exploring the
role of public art in presenting ideas, investigating issues, and fostering
artistic collaborations within the community.
Founded in 1984 by Artistic Director Jerry Beck, The Revolving Museum has
won national attention. It challenges and expands definitions of public art,
promotes public participation in the arts, transforms unused public spaces with
visual, media,and performing arts, and supports over forty artists with studio,
workshop, and an experimental theater space.
The exhibition will be an 80 foot long beet-red leather belt, stylized as a
championship boxing belt to metaphorically represent Jewish success in the
entertainment field. This project will also examine the influence of Jewish
humor on American popular culture. It also portrays the life of hotels,
bungalow colonies, farmers, and others through many periods of Catskill culture.
The free-standing belt incorporates an elaborate oval-shaped painting, many
photographic stained-glass portraits of Jewish comedians, and memorabilia boxes
of resort items. Four video monitors will be embedded like jewels in the belt,
showing film clips of many aspects of Catskills life. Viewers of the
installation will enter the belt through a large engraved Jewish star and bald
eagle. Special lighting effects, video, and mixed media objects will be
attached to the leather surface. On the outside surface of the belt will be a
large-scale map incorporating educational text, regional history, drawings, and
enlarged photographic postcards of the resorts, and personal stories. Elements
of The Borscht Belt will be designed, constructed, and painted by local Catskill
artists.
An art/comedy/history curriculum will be developed for the Jewish and other
youth groups who will contribute to the project, some of whom will be drawn from
Catskills summer camps.
The Catskills Institute is collaborating on the whole design of this unique
project. We expect to have a model and/or architectural blueprint of The
Borscht Belt available for viewing at the 1996 Catskills Institute conference,
and Jerry Beck will make a presentation on the project. People at the
conference will have the opportunity to respond in person to the
design-in-progress.
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