The Legacy Program: A series of conversations. Lenny Neyman: Polina Khentova – The Unknown Amazon of the Jewish Avant-Garde.

Recorded Lecture: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cbqRFCrfN6o

In 2023, we were delighted to present a LEGACY program exploring a little-known area of Eastern European Jewish artistic culture from the first half of the twentieth century.

The Legacy Program was launched with several projects, such as Mikhail Skakun's presentation of his English-language translation of Dukor: A Memoir by renowned Yiddish writer Daniel Charney, revealing the thriving world of pre-war Belarusian Jewry, and the Diaspora & Art Film Festival presenting compelling stories innovatively interpreted through art, film and animation and placed in historical context.

The Legacy Program is interdisciplinary, spanning art, literature, and film, with the ultimate goal of engaging, exploring, educating, and generating data to create events, exhibitions, and publications. The starting point of this process is a series of conversations about cultural figures in art, literature, theater and film of the period.

The heroes of the conversations are outstanding, but some of them almost forgotten, artists of Eastern European origin, such as Polina Khentova, Nathan Altman, Issachar Ber Rybak, Jules Paskin, Reuven Rubin, Simon Lissim, writer Ilya Ehrenburg, actor and director Solomon Mikhoels, Sergei Eisenstein, and more…

Lenny Neyman, a bibliophile and collector of illustrated books, graphics and theatrical art of the first half of the twentieth century, living in New York, will begin the series with a conversation about Polina Khentova, the forgotten Amazon and muse of the Jewish avant-garde, her short, tragic and stellar fate and creativity on the horizon of artistic life of the first half of the twentieth century.

Russian-American Cultural Center programing is made possible by part with public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs, in partnership with the City Council, the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature, Cojeco and Tianaderrah Foundation.