NEW YORK.- From March 17 through June 30, 2002, The Jewish Museum will present Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art, a contemporary art exhibition accompanied by extensive education programs, forums for discussion, and a major publication. At the core of this initiative is a selection of recent works by thirteen internationally recognized artists, all of whom make new and daring use of imagery taken from the Nazi era. Employing the challenging language of conceptual art, the artists bring the highly charged imagery of the Third Reich out of the past and into the present, leading us to question how images shape our perception of evil today.

"As an art museum that presents all of Jewish culture, we are committed to showing works of contemporary artists who have used images of the Nazi era to make a powerful and timely investigation of the nature of evil, " stated Joan Rosenbaum, Helen Goldsmith Director of The Jewish Museum. "These artists ask each viewer to consider his or her responsibility toward civil society, and to be vigilant about the bigotry and dehumanization that continue in the world more than fifty years after the Holocaust."

The exhibition Mirroring Evil: Nazi Imagery/Recent Art has been conceived and organized by Norman L. Kleeblatt, the Susan and Elihu Rose Curator of Fine Arts at The Jewish Museum. "A trend has emerged over the past decade," Mr. Kleeblatt says, "in which younger artists have departed from the more traditional ways of addressing the Holocaust and have begun to find new ways to confront the evil of the Third Reich. Many of these artists base their works on the material of popular culture, which is a potent source of information for their generation. Others wed Nazi imagery to coveted consumer products, warning us about the fragile boundaries between propaganda and promotion, desire and destruction. I believe all of these artists invite us to look at ourselves, to reflect on the role the Holocaust plays in our lives today - as memory, as point of reference, even as a subject for the entertainment industry - and to question the adequacy of our own response to evil."