Hear authors Juliet Carey and Abigail Green discuss their new book, Jewish Country Houses, which explores these powerful symbols of national identity.
Country houses are powerful symbols of national identity, evoking the glamorous world of the landowning aristocracy. Jewish country houses—properties that were owned, built, or renewed by Jews—tell a more complex story of prejudice and integration, difference and connection. Many had spectacular art collections and gardens. Some were stages for lavish entertaining, while others inspired the European avant-garde. A few are now museums of international importance; many more are hidden treasures; and all were beloved homes that bore witness to the achievements of newly emancipated Jews across Europe—and to a dream of belonging that mostly came to a brutal end with the Holocaust.
Authors Juliet Carey and Abigail Green will discuss their new book, Jewish Country Houses (Brandeis University Press, 2024), which explores these remarkable houses, their architecture and collections, and the lives of the extraordinary men and women who created and transformed them. Moderated by Laurel O. Peterson, Assistant Curator of Prints and Drawings, Yale Center for British Art.
This program is organized by the Yale Center for British Art and Yale Program in Jewish Studies.