Category: Uncategorized

Executive Assistant (f/h/x) – Position ACS level C

Presentation of the Museum

Through exhibitions combining Art and History, the Jewish Museum of Belgium invites the public to discover the diversity of Jewish cultures, past and present. Located in the heart of Europe’s capital, our mission is to preserve Belgium’s Jewish heritage and perpetuate its collective memory. Thanks to a bold cultural program enriched by universal themes, the museum plays an essential role as an intercultural mediator, promoting the values of openness and inclusiveness. Its educational work with school audiences, promoting intercultural and interreligious dialogue, earned it the Democracy and Human Rights Prize from the Parliament of the Wallonia-Brussels Federation in 2020.

Purpose of the position

The role of the Executive Assistant at the Jewish Museum of Belgium is to proactively support our President and our Director in managing their day-to-day activities, ensuring smooth coordination and rigorous monitoring of internal operations. As a central point of liaison, this position is essential for ensuring administrative efficiency, facilitating event coordination, managing supplier relations and overseeing the practical aspects of museum maintenance and security. This position requires exceptional organizational skills, initiative, versatility and a constant attention to quality and detail.

Duties and responsibilities

Calendar management

Proactive and efficient management of daily calendar, meeting schedules and agenda for the Museum’s President and Director.

2. Administrative support

Receiving, screening and dispatching of incoming mail (paper and digital)
Drafting and editing outgoing mail (paper and digital) to officials, business relations and thank yous for donations to the Museum.
Maintaining comprehensive and accurate records and files (paper and digital)
Supporting the Accounts Receivable with invoicing.
Establishing tax documents in relation to sponsors donations.
Supporting the Director with follow-up of subsidies applications and related documents.
Human Resources: follow-up with the external payroll services and Actiris.

3. Office supplies and contractors

Researching and ordering supplies for day-to-day operations and maintenance of the Museum
Call for tenders and obtain offers from prospective suppliers of goods and services

4. Logistic and administrative support to the Exhibitions Department and during Events at the Museum

Researching and contacting caterers and suppliers of goods and services with respect to best practice and competitive rates.
Sending out of invitations; managing and maintaining recipients lists, follow-up of rsvp’s

5. Building and Museum’s premises

Follow-up with cleaning staff and service companies
Follow-up with security services

6. Support for the Executive Committee and Board of Directors

Maintaining General Assembly calendars – Taking minutes during Executive Committee meetings
Sending out calls for meetings of the General Assembly

Skills and qualifications

Qualifications and experience:

At least 5 years of related experience in a similar field (preferably in the cultural or museum sector)
Excellent knowledge both written and verbal of French and Dutch; English is considered an asset

Know-how

Communication skills at all levels: company executives, colleagues and external contacts and public
Excellent knowledge and practice of all computing tools and devices. (Excel, Powerpoint, Word)

Personal skills

Flexibility, multitasking, prioritizing and organizational skills
Excellent relational skills, proactivity and problem-solving skills

Pre-requisites:

ACS work contract, C category (Full Secondary School Cycle)
Indefinite duration contract (CDI)
Full-time 38h/week

How to apply:

Please send your cv and cover letter to the attention of Barbara Cuglietta, Director of the Jewish Museum of Belgium at b.cuglietta@mjb-jmb.org and to Philippe Blondin, President of the Jewish Museum of Belgium at philippe.blondin@outlook.com before or at the latest on February 28, 2025.

The Jewish Museum of Belgium invites you to the closing of the exhibition “Passage. Textile & Rituals” !

By contextually reinterpreting the “Supra” ritual, Zinaïda Tchelidze brings together a plurality of voices through the art of the banquet in Georgian tradition.

The artist is interested in the phenomenon of social gatherings and what they reveal when taken out of their usual context. By provoking the encounter between mythology, ancestral ceremony and the contemporary world, she seeks to problematize codes in cultural traditions. She invents a collaborative, performative ritual table to explore the idea of hospitality in its various forms, depending on the space-time and social environment in which it is embedded.

For this performance, the artist creates a “feast tablecloth” and invites performers who are unfamiliar with this tradition. They take up the rite of toasting with “unique crockery”, i.e. vessels-sculptures specially made by Georgian artists and craftsmen of different generations according to their state of mind.

Waiting for the performers to activate them, these unique pieces are displayed in a china cabinet within the exhibition space.

***

This is part of the ” Laboratory of Rituals ” performance cycle.

At the heart of ” Laboratory of Rituals “, four performance artists, Hilal Aydoğdu, David Bernstein, Barbara Salomé Felgenhauer and Zinaïda Tchelidze, are committed to re-enchanting the world through the construction of new mythologies that touch and inspire them.

In this artistic laboratory, these artists explore the depths of the collective imagination, venturing into the recesses of history, culture and tradition. They invite us to plunge into their artistic universes, to cross passages between the visible and invisible worlds, to discover new ways of being and understanding the world.

The ” Laboratory of Rituals ” is much more than just an exhibition. It’s a space for artistic exploration, where cross-cultural performers meet, question and share their visions of the world. It’s a call for reflection, wonder and the creation of new mythologies that allow us to re-enchant our existence.

Program :

15:30 – Doors open

16:00 – 18:00 : Performance by ZinaÏda Tchelidze – To your arrival and our welcome

19:00 : Drink & Buffet

20:30 : Doors close

Pay what you can (recommended price €6)

The body of the artist proposes itself as a living altar, offered for a moment of reflection, meditation, prayer, and request, not for a god or saint, but for the world.

In the Christian religion, lighting a candle opens one’s heart to God and thus raises a prayer towards him. It is also a way of expressing one’s attachment to a saint in particular by making a request or even thanking him. An offering accompanies this approach.

Here, the ritual is proposed to allow oneself to express their concern, fear, and sorrow for the world – it is a way of reacting to the environmental despair that we are currently experiencing.

This performance is inspired both by the artist’s rituals in a women’s circle to celebrate, among other things, the solstices and equinoxes, and Joanna Macy’s essay, “Acting with Environmental Despair” which asks the question: “Can we recognize our sorrow for the world and live with it in a way that affirms our existence and frees our power to act?”

A year ago, the first version of this performance was presented during the Trouble Festival. In this context, more than sixty sorrows were laid at the foot of the altar. These anonymous sorrows will be engraved next to each other on one of the walls of the exhibition, during several one-off sessions between April 11 and September 1.

Performance from 6:30 pm

Barbara Salomé Felgenhauer (1992, Huy, Belgium) lives and works in Brussels. A multidisciplinary artist, her practice covers photography, film, performance, and installation. The question of narrative and the power of words and ideas runs through her work. She uses storytelling as an experience of emancipation and empowerment from gender norms and stereotypes and as a creative force of the universe to induce new relationships to worlds.

She graduated from the photography workshop at ESA Saint-Luc in Liège in 2013 and from ENSAV La Cambre in Brussels in 2022. She obtained her master’s degree with Grand Distinction and the Boghossian Foundation Prize 2022 with her project Terrapolis.

The last exhibition of the Jewish Museum of Belgium before closing for construction works in late 2024, Passage reflects on the idea of transformation. It explores how the spiritual blends with the profane life, how the rite combines with the ordinary, and what happens when the collective and the intimate tie together.

The exhibition consists of three complementary paths. The first immerses us in the universe of Charlemagne Palestine. In an installation entitled «AA BATT BEARR BARR MITZVAHH INN MESHUGAHLANDDD», the artist reinterprets the transition to adulthood in the Jewish tradition. In the tradition of schmattès, the Yiddish word for rags or second-hand clothes, he reinvents the gestures of collecting, sewing, and mending the fabric that mark the history of the Jewish worlds.

Echoing the fabric assemblages of Charlemagne Palestine, the second route proposes a dialogue around textiles, by crossing the collections of the Jewish Museum of Belgium, those of the Center of Judeo-Moroccan Culture, and the interventions of four contemporary artists: Jennifer Bornstein, Richard Moszkowicz, Elise Peroi, Arlette Vermeiren. This game of free-spirited associations reminds us that textile work is, in itself, a ritual practice and that women occupy a central place in it. It also shows that fabrics are never a mere adornment: alternately, they are places of memory, symbols of celebration, or accessions to the sacred.

Through a performances program, the third path questions the contemporary resurgence of beliefs and rites. Hilal Aydoğdu, David Bernstein, Barbara Salomé Felgenhauer, and Zinaïda Tchelidze rethink the museum space to create an intimate and sensory laboratory, conducive to reflection and exchange.

A symbolic gesture, Passage is not only the end point of an exhibition program that has been running in this building for over twenty years. This exhibition questions the future Jewish Museum, which will also imagine new forms of passages.

circumcision cloths, Arlon, 1843, 1888, 1875, Antwerp, 1802

SKINFOLD is a durational performance in which bodies move alongside each other in reciprocal recognition, leaning towards and exploring internalised landscapes in an attempt of soft transformations.

Tending to an embodied habitat, where boundaries of flesh and body image continuously blur, the performers allow themselves to shift their representational features and ways of bodily perceptions. What does it mean to inhabit a body? This body?

These strategies for a utopian and transformative practice stem from an ongoing choreographic research initiated by Abigail Aleksander and Mary Szydlowska. Presented for the first time in the context of Shoshana Walfish’s exhibition, SKINFOLD responds and converses with Walfish’s paintings series Illusive Bodies; where representation and corporealities are put into interpretational play.

———

Abigail Aleksander and Mary Szydlowska are performers & choreographers based in Brussels. They met in 2019 during their respective studies at P.A.R.T.S. and have been engaged in each other’s work since. SKINFOLD is their first performance collaboration.

Abigail Aleksander works as a performer and collaborator with a variety of art makers including: Philipp Gehmacher, Michiel Vandevelde, Jan Martens and Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker. She began her dance training in London before graduating with a BA from P.A.R.T.S in 2022. SKINFOLD is her first choreographic work.

Mary Szydlowska’s practice varies between movement, installation and sculptural objects. Since graduating from MA STUDIOS programme at P.A.R.T.S, they’ve been making solo performances touching upon the notions of peripheral, withdrawn and invisible phenomena. Their work has been supported and presented by Beursschwourburg, IKOB Museum, Brussels Gallery Weekend, Zachęta National Gallery in Warsaw, workspacebrussels, wp zimmer, CC Strombeek and others.

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Program :
1:30pm – Doors open
2pm to 5pm – SKINFOLD performance
5:15pm – Artist talk moderated by Persis Bekkering
6:30pm – Doors close

*The performance lasts for three hours, the audience can come, go and return freely. To avoid overcrowding, the performance can host 15 guests at one time, you may need to wait if this number is exceeded.

Credits:

Concept, choreography, performance Abigail Aleksander / Mary Szydlowska Music composition, Hannah Todt Special thanks to Shoshana Walfish, PARTS, Steven De Belder, Steven Peeters.

This project is supported by the Vlaamse Gemeenschapscommissie (VGC).

As part of the Photo Brussels Festival, the Jewish Museum of Belgium invites you to the closing of its exhibition “Erwin Blumenfeld. Photography. 1930-1950” on 4 February 2024 at 4pm for a guided tour in the presence of the Director of Exhibitions, Bruno Benvindo, and the photographer’s granddaughter, Nadia Blumenfeld Charbit.

This is the last opportunity to discover an exhibition devoted to one of the most influential photographers of the 20th century: Erwin Blumenfeld (1897-1969). Known for his exceptionally creative fashion photographs, Blumenfeld’s work is polymorphous, combining Dadaist inspiration, political commitment and artistic experimentation.

Featuring over a hundred photographs, the exhibition looks back at the life of this Berlin Jew, who was part of the cultural avant-garde in Amsterdam and then Paris, before being interned when the Second World War broke out. He managed to take refuge in New York at the last minute in 1941, where he enjoyed a successful career, marked by a free exploration of form and colour.

Program :

Doors open at 3:30 p.m.

Guided tour from 4pm to 5pm with Nadia Blumenfeld Charbit (in FR).

Drinks from 5.00 p.m. to 6.00 p.m.

Doors close at 6.30pm.

Price: 10 euros (including access to the exhibition) / Free for students

Registration available here.

We are pleased to invite you to the MultiMemo Dissemination Conference and Holocaust Commemoration Event.

This event is organized by CEJI – A Jewish Contribution to an inclusive Europe, in partnership with the Jewish Museum of Belgium, as part of the EU funded project MultiMemo – Multidirectional Memory: Remembering for Social Justice.

The MultiMemo project proposes an intersectional approach to remembrance – one that underscores the relevance of memory for social justice and the need to face contemporary challenges related to human rights violations, military conflicts and violence, social exclusion, and the migration crisis.

The first MultiMemo dissemination conference and commemoration event aims to promote a new language of commemoration through a multidirectional approach to holocaust remembrance based on the four principles of inclusivity, sustainability, the rescuing of memory, and epistemic justice through arts, academia, urbanism, activism, and policy making.

Date & Time:

21^st of January 2024, 16.00h (CET).

Location:

Jewish Museum of Belgium.

Language

The event will be in English. Translation into French and Dutch will be provided.

Registration

Click here to fill in the registration form. Please note that there is a limited number of seats. Registration closes on January 15th.

From September 29, the Jewish Museum of Belgium proposes an exhibition featuring the photographer Erwin Blumenfeld (1897-1969). Famous for his exceptionnaly creative fashion portraits, Blumenfeld’s artistry is offers a polymorphic work where Dadaïst inspiration, political committment and artistic expérimentations intertwine.

Featuring over a hundred photographs, the exhibition looks back at the life of this Berlin Jew who evolved within the cultural avant-garde movement in Amsterdam and Paris. As WWII broke out, he endured internment in a camp but was able to flee to New York in 1941 where his art blossomed with a free exploration of shapes and colors.

**Hitler, Grauenfresse**
Netherlands, 1938
© The Estate of Erwin Blumenfeld 2022

Het Joods Museum van België presenteert een nieuwe tentoonstelling gewijd aan de Amerikaanse conceptuele kunstenaar Sol LeWitt (1928-2007). De tentoonstelling wordt georganiseerd door Barbara Cuglietta en Stephanie Manasseh in samenwerking met de nalatenschap van de kunstenaar.

Aan de hand van een unieke selectie van Wall Drawings (muurtekeningen), werken op papier, gouaches, structuren en archiefmateriaal uit de jaren 1960 tot 2000, belicht deze tentoonstelling de diversiteit en eenheid in Sol LeWitts productieve oeuvre. Het wordt een dubbele première: een verkenning van zijn Joodse roots en een onderzoek naar zijn banden met België. De tentoonstelling gaat ook gepaard met de lancering van de nieuwe Sol LeWitt-applicatie, ontwikkeld door Microsoft.

De tentoonstelling

Solomon (Sol) LeWitt, geboren in Hartford, Connecticut, in een familie van Joodse immigranten uit Rusland, was een pionier op het gebied van conceptuele en minimalistische kunst, en staat vooral bekend om zijn Wall Drawings. Hoewel hij niet religieus was en een seculier leven leidde, onderhield Sol LeWitt gedurende zijn hele leven een discrete maar hardnekkige band met zijn Joodse achtergrond. In de jaren negentig raakte hij actiever betrokken bij zijn gemeenschap in Chester, Connecticut, en ontwierp hij de nieuwe synagoge van de gereformeerde Congregatie Beth Shalom Rodfe Zedek, die in 2001 werd geopend. Voor Sol LeWitt was het ontwerp van een synagoge “een probleem van geometrische vormen in een ruimte die aangepast is aan ritueel gebruik”. Aan de hand van archieven, tekeningen, foto’s en getuigenissen verkent de tentoonstelling in het Joods Museum van België de ontstaansgeschiedenis van dit belangrijke project, dat tot nu toe weinig bekend is bij het grote publiek.

De tentoonstelling gaat ook in op een ander vergeten aspect van Sol LeWitts carrière: de nauwe relaties die de kunstenaar doorheen zijn carrière ontwikkelde met Belgische verzamelaars, galeriehouders en in België gevestigde kunstenaars. Zo zal onder meer Wall Drawing #138, voor het eerst gemaakt in Brussel in de galerie MTL – die een pioniersrol speelde bij de introductie van conceptuele kunst in België – worden getoond, evenals Sol LeWitts samenwerking met de architect Charles Vandenhove bij het ontwerp van het Universitair Ziekenhuis in Luik.

Alle werken in de tentoonstelling zijn afkomstig uit Belgische openbare en privé-collecties, alsook uit de LeWitt Collection. De Wall Drawings, die rechtstreeks op de muren van het Joods Museum van België worden aangebracht, vormen een uitzonderlijke participatieve ervaring, waarbij in Brussel gevestigde jonge kunstenaars en studenten aan kunstscholen worden samengebracht met professionele kunstenaars uit de studio van LeWitt. Voor elke muurtekening worden teams gevormd rond een professionele assistent die met de lokale studenten werkt en hen begeleidt. Dit educatieve initiatief is voor hen een unieke kans om betrokken te worden bij het creatieve proces van een van de grootste Amerikaanse kunstenaars.

Ten slotte is de tentoonstelling in het Joods Museum van België de gelegenheid om in Europa een applicatie voor smartphones te lanceren, gewijd aan de kunstenaar en zijn werk en ontwikkeld door Microsoft in samenwerking met de LeWitt Collection. In overeenstemming met de wens van Sol LeWitt om kunst voor iedereen toegankelijk te maken, zal deze applicatie de bezoekers een unieke meeslepende en educatieve ervaring bieden.

(Omslagfoto: Sol LeWitt, Wall Drawing #528G, 1987. Exhibition view at Galleria Massimo Minini, Italy, 2013. Photo Courtesy Galleria Massimo Minini © Estate of Sol LeWitt, 2021)