TORONTO, January 16, 1998 -- "Never forget" has been one of the central messages in the decades after the Holocaust. In the past 50 years, individuals and institutions have been looking for ways to remember. Monuments have been erected, museums opened. In the past months, Canadians have been debating the establishment of a Holocaust gallery in the Canadian War Museum.

What is the best way for us to remember? What is the role of visual art and architecture in that remembrance? To discuss these issues, the Art Gallery of Ontario, and York University's Atkinson College and the Canadian Centre for German and European Studies, will be holding a panel discussion at the AGO on Sunday, January 18, 1998.

The panel will examine how visual art can bring up personal and collective memories of the past. Participants from around the world will discuss questions such as: Does art or architecture have a responsibility in recalling the events of the Holocaust? Is marking a site with a Holocaust memorial or museum a guarantee for a future memorialization of the past? Is it possible we run the risk of forgetting history once the object is made?

WHAT:
Panel Discussion:
Topographies of Evil: Auschwitz and the Politics of the Aesthetic

WHO:
Shelley Hornstein, Associate Professor of Art History, Chair of Fine Arts, Atkinson College, York University; currently co-authoring a book titled Culture, Memory and Resistance: Representation and the Holocaust.

Ernst van Alphen, Director of Communication and Education at the Museum Boijmans van Beuningen in Rotterdam; author of Caught by History: Holocaust Effects in Contemporary Art, Literature and Theory(1998).

Reesa Greenberg, Associate Professor of Art History, Concordia University, recently co-edited Thinking About Exhibitions (1995).

Berel Lang, Professor of Humanities, Trinity College (Hartford, Conn.); author of 16 books, including Act and the Idea of the Nazi Genocide (1990).

Robert Jan van Pelt, Professor of Cultural History, Waterloo University School of Architecture; author of Architectural Principles in the Age of Historicism; co-author of Auschwitz: 1270 to the Present.

Carol Zemel, Professor and Chair of Art History, State University of New York at Buffalo; currently working on a book titled Graven Images: Modern Visual Culture and East European Jews.

WHEN:
Sunday, January 18, 1998
2:00 to 4:00 p.m.

WHERE:
Hal Jackman Room, Art Gallery of Ontario
317 Dundas Street West
Toronto

HOSTED BY: Atkinson College, York University
The Canadian Centre for German and European Studies, York University
The Art Gallery of Ontario

For more information, please call:

Sine MacKinnon
Senior Advisor for Media Relations
(416) 736-2100, ext. 22087
email: sinem@yorku.ca

Alison Masemann
Media Relations Officer
(416) 736-2100, ext. 22086
email: masemann@yorku.ca
YU/004/98