Leonard Bernstein: The Power of Music

FAIN: GE-235020-16

National Museum of American Jewish History (Philadelphia, PA 19106-2517)
Ivy Weingram (Project Director: August 2015 to November 2017)

Planning for a traveling exhibition, a scholarly catalog, and curriculum materials exploring the life, music, and influence of composer Leonard Bernstein.

The National Museum of American Jewish History requests a planning grant to support the development of the special exhibition, Leonard Bernstein: The Power of Music (working title), opening in March 2018 to celebrate the centennial year of Bernstein’s birth. This museum exhibition will explore how Leonard Bernstein's original compositions for orchestra and the theater expressed the restlessness, anxiety, fear, and hope of a generation of Americans living through World War II and the Holocaust, Vietnam, and turbulent social change. The exhibition will expand the scope of national discussions and previous analyses of Bernstein’s work by focusing on how Bernstein’s Jewish faith and social progressivism informed his reinvention of American music.