Maryan has been the subject of a number of exhibitions. And in numerous collections around
the world, there has not been a deep dive into his practice. Specifically, not outside a Jewish lens.
And this exhibition's efforts were really around reinserting Maryan into the art historical
cannon where he belongs. Maryan passed away prematurely at the age of 50, and his work
for the most part has gone unknown, and under shown. So this was really an opportunity to
dig, research, and bring together works that have not been exhibited, let alone published before. I
was familiar with Maryan's work from a young age, I myself am a third generation Holocaust
survivor. My grandmother and grandfather were both survivors of the Holocaust. And my grandmother
was hidden in a convent in France during World War II with Maryan's wife, Annette. And
my grandmother and Annette kept a longstanding friendship following the war. They both
immigrated to New York and kept in touch with a number of other girls that had been hidden
with them. When I started my career in the Arts in New York City at a commercial art gallery,
Annette invited myself and my mother to her apartment on the Upper East Side.
And when I walked in, it was nothing short of a time capsule. There were piles and piles
and racks of Maryan's paintings, drawings, and cabinets. Even his paint brush was sitting on a
drafting table, as though it had not been moved since he last worked in the space 30 years ago.
Fast forward, nearly 20 years, and I am in Miami, and starting my work here at MOCA.
And walking through the Art Basel, Miami Beach Art Fair, and their hanging was Maryan's paintings. I
was completely blown away. And you know, here I was just taking on this leadership
at a museum that was located in the center of a highly populous immigrant community.
Thinking about the audiences that we serve, and also the work that we've been doing as an
institution focused on underexplored artists, and stories that have maybe not been told. And
thought that there might be something there to further explore. And it was from that
moment that we brought Allison Gingeras onto the project. Allison being an international
curator with so much knowledge of this period, and her own connections to Paris and Poland
and Maryan's original birth state, was able to go on this journey of investigating and putting
together so many pieces. And what this show has become, has been nothing less than thrilling.
It was a very deliberate choice to not want to over determine a viewer,
especially a viewer who probably had never heard of Maryan, or his story with the
extremely harrowing experience of his imprisonment during the Shoah. And to me, it was important that
we enter into the visual and emotional intensity of his paintings as he wanted to be perceived. He,
in his lifetime, multiple times articulated his desire not to be pigeonholed or put into a
kind of ghetto of being a Holocaust artist. That category he did not want to be affiliated with.
Yet, his work and that subject matter in ways that are both veiled and explicit, you know, reoccur
constantly. So I felt that it was important that the viewer traversed numerous galleries in which
we can really get into his unique painting style, get into his subject matter,
sort of have an overview of his visual and aesthetic universe, and then experience the
more complicated history of what happened to him, but also how he
processed that trauma in very specific and groundbreaking ways.
"Ecce Homo" is a film that Maryan made at the end of his life. And he made that at the Chelsea Hotel
with fellow artists, Kenny Schneider. What it is, is a black and white experimental film from the
late seventies, where he's giving a testimonial of his experience in the Holocaust. But at the same
time, he's introducing news and images from the news of that moment. So we're seeing images from
the Civil Rights Movement, the anti-Vietnam war movement, and other images of dictators. And so
for me, that was a real turning point, because it took Maryan's lived experience in trauma and
really translated it into understanding his interest in social political issues,
and the human experience in general. And as a contemporary art museum, that film for us
has been such a source of inspiration for exciting programs and discussions.
I think that because we are living in a period where democracy itself
is in question in this country and in across countries, even in Poland, his birth country,
in which we are seeing authoritarianism come back in the unbridled ways.
I think that his significance is not just as a witness, but as an artist who really
tried to channel the drive to reconstruct one's self, and the very notion of human in
all of his paintings and all of his drawings, and everything that he wrote and tried to create.
So I think that his work transcends even. It's functioned as a part of the historical record.
I mean, I think he's really a thinker of the struggle to maintain humanity
against the worst odds. And the importance of expressing these things in whatever form one can.
Right now, this is the moment where the Holocaust is passing from memory to history. And Maryan's
work speaks, bears witness to that history. And also speaks to our contemporary moment
as we dive in and learn more about his practice, his biography. You know, his various interests and
inspirations. There are so many entry points to the exhibition, and I think
are so relative to our contemporary moment. And you know, hope that our visitors continue to stay
engaged with the exhibition, through our panel discussions, our conversations, and visiting and
revisiting the show while we have it. Coming to the museum right now is having the opportunity to
see works that have not been on view publicly before. And we're really proud of that.