NEW YORK.- During the Passover seder, families customarily open their doors as a welcoming gesture to the biblical prophet Elijah and all those in community who are hungry. The Jewish Museum will present Elijah Chair: Art, Ritual, and Social Action from February 6 through April 11, 2004 in the Museum’s Barbara and E. Robert Goodkind Media Center. This unique work, by Canadian artist Melissa Shiff, is inspired by the tradition of opening the door for Elijah during the Passover seder. It consists of an antique rocking chair with a video monitor embedded on the chair’s back showing a video loop of doors that open into various homes: uptown, downtown, rich, poor, and everything in between. Shiff’s sculpture/video installation serves as a meditation on unconditional hospitality and the unequal distribution of wealth in urban America.

Elijah Chair was created by Melissa Shiff for the Times Square Seder, a public art and social action project she organized at the Chashama Arts Organization in New York City in March 2002. The multimedia event consisted of readings, performances, video projections, art installations and a “Matzoh Ball Soup Kitchen”. A recent acquisition of The Jewish Museum’s collection, Elijah Chair combines two Jewish customs related to the prophet: the opening of the door for Elijah, and the setting aside of a chair for him. Shiff states that “this video documents the staggering divide of wealth in this city of extremes in an effort to show that Elijah signifies the hospitality and openness to the Other that must occur.…If Elijah represents hospitality, I wanted to push his role even further and employ this prophetic figure in the service of social action.”

Melissa Shiff is a Toronto-based video, performance and installation artist who is interested in combining the reinvention of Jewish ritual with social activism. She studied at The School of the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and Tufts University. She is currently Chairperson of the Board of Directors at Trinity Square Video, a not-for--profit video collective in Toronto.

Located on the third floor of The Jewish Museum, the Goodkind Media Center houses a digital library of radio and television programs from the Museum’s National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting (NJAB). It also features a changing exhibition space dedicated to video and new media. Using computer workstations, visitors are able to search material by keyword and by categories such as art, comedy, drama, news, music, kids, Israel, and the Holocaust.

The National Jewish Archive of Broadcasting, founded in 1981 in association with the Charles H. Revson Foundation, is the largest and most comprehensive body of broadcast materials on 20th century Jewish culture in the United States. With a mission to collect, preserve and exhibit television and radio programs related to the Jewish experience, the NJAB is an important educational resource for critical examination of how Jews have been portrayed and portray themselves, and how the mass media has addressed issues of ethnicity and diversity. Its collection is comprised of 4,300 broadcast and cable television and radio programs.