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| Jewish Legacy Throne in Miami |
An Open
Letter to Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis from Israeli Prof. Mel Alexenberg
As a citizen
of both Florida and Israel, I applaud your visit to Israel and thank you for
being the most pro-Israel governor in America.
I appreciate that you brought with you Floridian businessmen, university
administrators and faculty, religious leaders, and elected officials to work
with their Israeli counterparts in developing collaborative Florida-Israel
projects.
You would
enjoy knowing about the collaborative Florida-Israel “Legacy Thrones”
monumental art project created when I was dean of visual arts at New World
School of the Arts in Miami. I worked
with my college students and elders from Miami’s Hispanic, African-American,
and Jewish communities to create three twenty-foot high, two-ton thrones that
visually convey the stories of each of the ethnic communities.
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| Hispanic Legacy Throne facing Biscayne Bay |
Through
aesthetic dialogue between young people and elders valued traditions of the
past were transformed into artistic statements of enduring significance. Together,
young and old hands shaped wet clay into colorful ceramic relief sculptures
collaged onto three towering steel and concrete thrones that stand facing Biscayne
Bay in Margaret Pace Park. See photos of the project at http://melalexenberg.com/artwork.php?id=11.
In addition
to being intergenerational and multicultural, the “Legacy Throne” project
created a vibrant dialog between Christians and Jews. The Catholic Hispanic, Protestant
African-American, and Jewish elders worked on each of the three thrones in one huge
studio at NWSA. Working alongside each
other and learning about each other’s cultures, they came to realize how much
they shared in experiences and in values. The theme of the “Legacy Thrones” project
became the biblical passage “Behold, how good and how pleasant it is when we
sit together” (Psalm 133). Biblical images formed in clay adorned
all three thrones.
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| African-American Legacy Throne |
The elders
shared their commitments to living in freedom in America and to biblical
values. Freedom from slavery and from the tyrannical regimes of Hitler and
Castro shaped their reminiscences. Some women had heard first-hand stories of
slavery on Southern plantations from their grandmothers. One Holocaust survivor
spoke about having to bite the umbilical cord of her child born in hiding in an
underground pit. Cuban exiles talked about escaping the brutal oppression
on the island they loved.
The ceramic relief
sculptures could only be epoxied to the front of the thrones resting
horizontally on the studio floor.
Completing the backs had to wait for cranes to lift them in place
vertically and install them facing the bay.
The long delay in finishing the park found me back in Israel. My wife artist Miriam Benjamin and I worked
with students at Emunah College School of the Arts in Jerusalem to create the
relief sculptures to adorn the back of the Jewish throne. They were shipped to Miami where our former
NWSA students completed the throne with Israel-made ceramic Hebrew letters. The
“Legacy Throne” project became the first collaborative Florida-Israel art project.
Retiring after a decade as dean at NWSA, I
returned to Israel to accept a professorship at Ariel University. I was happy to see you honored by Ariel
University and hear you say: “This recognition means a lot and I am humbled to
be the recipient. Let it be known that
Florida will always stand with Israel, our greatest ally in the Middle
East.” I am certain that the partnership
that you forged between Ariel U. and Florida Atlantic U. will be rewarding to
both universities.
The
writer is author of Through
a Bible Lens: Biblical Insights for Smartphone Photography and Social Media
and former dean at New World School of the Arts in Miami, professor at Columbia
University, research fellow at MIT Center for Advanced Visual Studies,
professor at Ariel University, and head of Emunah College School of the Arts in
Jerusalem.
