Vivian Mann

Vivian B. Mann is Director Emerita of the Master’s Program in Jewish Art and Visual Culture at The Jewish Theological Seminary and Curator Emerita of Judaica at The Jewish Museum, where she created numerous exhibitions and their catalogs. In 2000, her Jewish Texts on the Visual Arts was published by Cambridge University Press, and in 2005 Art and Ceremony in Jewish Life: Essays in the History of Jewish Art was published by Pindar Press. Uneasy Communion. Jews and Altarpieces in Medieval Spain, appeared in 2010 in conjunction with an exhibition at the Museum of Biblical Art, New York. In addition, she has written numerous articles in the fields of medieval art and Judaica as well as numerous reviews of scholarly publications.

Dr. Mann has been a recipient of the Woodrow Wilson Fellowship, NEA Fellowship for Museum Professionals, NEH Fellowships for Research, and the NEH Collaborative Projects Grant for Interpretative Research, among other fellowships. She has also been a fellow at the Institute for Advanced Studies of the Hebrew University (1996).

In 1999, Dr. Mann was awarded the Jewish Cultural Achievement Award in Jewish Thought by the National Foundation for Jewish Culture for her successful efforts at establishing a master’s program in Jewish Art and for her scholarship in the field. In 2007, Dr. Mann co-founded Images: A Journal in Jewish Art and Visual Culture, the first American journal for Jewish art.

 

Selected Publications

Jewish Texts on the Visual Arts (New York, Cambridge University Press, 2000); paperback edition, 2011.

Art and Ceremony in Jewish Life. Essays in Jewish Art History (London: Pindar Press, 2005).

Editor and co-author. Uneasy Communion. Jews, Christians and Altarpieces in Medieval Spain (New York: MOBIA, 2010).

“Forging Judaica–The Case of the Italian Majolica Plates,” Art and its Uses: The Visual Image and Modern Jewish Society. Studies in Contemporary Jewry VI, ed. Richard I. Cohen, (London: Oxford University Press, 1990), pp. 201-26.

“Toward an ‘Iconography’ of Medieval Diaspora Synagogues,” Europas Juden im Mittelalter. Beitrȁge des internationalen Symposiums in Speyer von 20. bis 25. Oktober 2002, ed. Christoph Cluse (Trier: Kliomedia, 2001), 365-76. English translation

“A Shared Tradition: The Decorated Pages of Medieval Bibles and Qur’ans,” in The Edinburgh Companion to the Bible and the Arts, ed. Stephen Prickett (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press, February, 2014), 161-74.