Karen Koblitz is an artist and educator from Los Angeles, California, who has dedicated years to researching the story of her paternal grandfather’s family. Koblitz’s third and fourth great-grandfathers were both shoemakers in the countryside of Southern Bohemia, now part of the Czech Republic: in 1873, her great great-grandfather Moses Koblitz, an agricultural trader, brought his family to Cleveland, Ohio, in search of a better life. In this exhibition, Koblitz’s family story is vividly recreated through a series of documents, letters, photographs and textiles that take us, both historically and personally, from the eighteenth century, past the tragic events of the Holocaust, through to the present day. Her story represents a tale of two nations as seen through the lens of one Jewish working-class family from Southern Bohemia. The exhibition will be viewable at the American Center during public programs and by prior arrangement from the end of September through the end of November.
