U.S. artist Noah Breuer’s exhibition at the American Center in Prague, “Eighty-Eight of 250,” references the artist’s family, limited edition numbering, and the 250th anniversary of the United States. Breuer’s Jewish grandparents obtained their U.S. visas at the American Embassy in Prague November 10, 1938, the very day the Kristallnacht pogrom struck the Vienna home they had just escaped weeks earlier. Despite greatly restricted U.S. immigration policies at the time, the American Breuer family came to enjoy the benefits and freedoms of the United States for 88 of the country’s 250-year history.
As an artist and Assistant Professor of Print Media at the University at Buffalo, SUNY, Breuer focuses his work and research and practice on the cultural legacy of early-20th-century Jewish-owned textile printing companies in Czech Bohemia. His Czech ancestor’s prosperous textile business in Dvůr Králové was expropriated by Nazi occupiers and their lives extinguished. Through what he describes as a “reclamation project,” Breuer investigates his own family’s lost industrial history, resurrecting and reinterpreting archival designs to explore the tension between ancestral memory and contemporary ownership. You can see his works at the American Center from May 18 through June 11 during public programs and upon previous appointment.
