Portable Tombs of Memory: The Ringelblum Archive as a Collection of Objects is a three-part lecture series by Bożena Shallcross. It explores the Ringelblum Archive as a collection of material objects that informs our perception of the “bare everyday” during the Jewish genocide, the question of the material durability and fragility of objects, and the methods of preserving their materiality.

Thursday, November 9 and 16 at 6 pm
38 West 86th Street, Lecture Hall

$15 General | $12 Seniors | Free for people with a college or university affiliation or museum ID, people with disabilities and caregivers, and BGC members

Rust and Mold
Thursday, November 9 at 6 pm

At this event, Shallcross analyzes the (mal)function of the containers she discussed in the first lecture in the series, their material state and the enormous conservation challenges that followed the Ringelblum Archive’s discovery. The restoration of its contents is presented as an ongoing project that defies prevailing narratives of wartime material precarity and total loss.

Candy Wrappers
Thursday, November 16 at 6pm

In the final lecture in this series, Shallcross explores the idea of the everyday that, by its common logic, is ordinary, but in the wartime ghetto was turned upside down, inasmuch as daily survival had become extraordinary. In this context, Shallcross explores how smuggled food and ephemeral objects such as ration tickets or candy wrappers foreground the material texture of survival.