Skirball Cultural Center: Blacklist: The Hollywood Red Scare 

We’re honored to announce our support of a new project with our longtime partner, Skirball Cultural Center, a community leader in the arts, poetry, and mindfulness, physically located in Los Angeles with a far-reaching impact beyond. Blacklist: The Hollywood Red Scare is an original exhibition created by and on loan from the Jewish Museum Milwaukee.

Making its West Coast debut at the Skirball Cultural Center with newly added artifacts, Blacklist: The Hollywood Red Scare  shines a spotlight on the proceedings, investigations, motives, and choices of those caught in the crosshairs—including the many Jewish creatives and executives who suffered under and enforced the blacklist.

According to a recent article in the Los Angeles Times, “Museum exhibitions are generally planned several years ahead of time. ‘Hollywood Red Scare’ was not. Skirball director Sheri Bernsteinand deputy director Michele Urton saw the exhibition at Baltimore’s Jewish Museum of Maryland in mid-2022 and instantly decided it must travel to Los Angeles, the center of the film industry. It was planned — and significantly expanded—in about 10 months.”

The Skirball presentation includes two new sections. One of them, “Hollywood and Anti-Fascism,” explores the lives of the Hollywood Ten before World War II. The other new section, “Talented and Targeted,” explores antisemitism and racism at the time, specifically “how the experience of being blacklisted was not monolithic, especially for people who experienced structural inequality already,”

Since 1996, Skirball has been a place of meeting, “guided by the Jewish tradition of welcoming the stranger,” and by democratic ideals of freedom and equality. It is among the leading cultural venues in Los Angeles, “hospitable to and inclusive of all communities and committed to promoting cultural experiences that foster human connections and help build a more just society.”

We have worked to help support numerous Skirball programs and exhibitions in the past, including the groundbreaking Notorious RBG: The Life and Times of Ruth Bader Ginsburg, honoring the great justice in 2018-2019, Jewish Meditation in 2020, and their ongoing, much-in-demand Creative Writing Workshop.

We’re inspired by this timely new exhibit and the ongoing excellence and dedication shown by our partner, Skirball Cultural Center.