Marisa J. Futernick | Dirty Dancing: Revisiting the Catskills
March 6–April 14, 2023
Virtual artist talk: Sunday March 5, 7pm ET
Exhibition reception: Monday March 13, 6–7pm
Gallery hours: Monday–Thursday, 10am–3pm
Kniznick Gallery at Brandeis University
Women's Studies Research Center, Epstein Building
515 South Street, Waltham, MA 02453
The Hadassah-Brandeis Institute at Brandeis University presents Dirty Dancing: Revisiting the Catskills, a solo exhibition featuring the work of Marisa J. Futernick.
Marisa J. Futernick’s lush, poster-size prints combine historical photographs with invented text to look at the Jewish Catskill resorts of the 1960s. Drawing from personal history while recalling a broader Jewish experience, the works evoke the atmosphere of the “Borscht Belt,” famously mythologized in mainstream culture as the setting for the film Dirty Dancing.
Futernick pairs photographs from her mother’s family’s 1960s summer vacations in the Catskills with period dance crazes and fictional dialogues. Set around swimming pools, patios, verdant lawns and shuffleboard courts, the photographs carry the qualities and color of 1960s film, with fashion to match. Futernick heightens these scenes of recreation with graphics that call on viewers to do the Watusi, the Hully Gully, and the Twist. Jaunty conversations, mostly between women, extend these environments, combining Yiddish phrases, humor, and subtle sociopolitical observation. Dirty Dancing investigates the roles of identity and class in postwar American travel and leisure, and invites us to consider what we carry from this world that has disappeared.
Virtual Opening and Artist Talk
Sunday March 5, 7pm ET
Register here
In celebration of the exhibition's opening, Marisa J. Futernick will discuss her practice, process and the making of Dirty Dancing: Revisiting the Catskills.
Exhibition Reception and Lecture
Monday March 13
Extended gallery hours: 10am–8pm
Exhibition reception: 6–7pm
Lecture: 7pm ET (live and virtual; register here)
Visit Marisa J. Futernick's Dirty Dancing: Revisiting the Catskills, and from 6–7pm, enjoy refreshments and music that evoke the Borscht Belt era.
This event is paired with Samantha Pickette's 7pm lecture, “Peak TV’s Unapologetic Jewish Woman: Exploring Jewish Female Representation in Contemporary Television Comedy” in the Liberman-Miller Lecture Hall and online.
All events are free and open to the public.