Erica Lehrer is an anthropologist, curator, and academic specializing in post-Holocaust Jewish culture, museum studies, ethnography, and public scholarship. She is associate professor of History and Sociology/Anthropology at Concordia University, where she holds a Canada Research Chair in Museum and Heritage Studies and serves as director of the Curating and Public Scholarship Lab at Concordia University.
Education She has received a B.A. from Grinnell College and M.A. and PhD degrees from the University of Michigan.
Career In 2013, Lehrer curated "Souvenir, Talisman, Toy," an ethnographic exhibition of historical and contemporary Polish-made figurines depicting Jews (including the modern antisemitic Jew with a coin figurines), at the Ethnographic Museum of Kraków. A smaller selection of objects and media from the exhibit was on display from July 28 – August 30, 2013, at the Galicia Jewish Museum.Why Are the Poles Amassing Jewish Figurines?, Haaretz, Benny Mer, 20 November 2014Poland's mantelpiece Jews, The JC, 4 December 2014Cała, Alina. "„Pamiątka, Zabawka, Talizman/Souvenir, Talisman, Toy”(wystawa w Muzeum Etnograficznym w Krakowie, 2013 rok, kuratorka: Erica Lehrer)." Studia Litteraria et Historica 3-4 (2015): 265-271. In 2016, she curated a new exhibition at the Galicia Jewish Museum titled "A Single Point Perspective/Punkt Zbiezny."
Personal life and family Lehrer's uncle was physicist Frederick Reif, who was married to Mildred Dresselhaus. Her mother, Liane Reif-Lehrer, was a Holocaust survivor and professor at Harvard Medical School. Her brother, Damon Lehrer, is a children's book author.
Awards Canada Research Chair in Museum and Heritage Studies Canada Research Chair in Post-Conflict Memory, Ethnography and Museology Hazel D. Cole Fellowship in Jewish Studies, University of Washington Illinois Humanities Post-Doctoral Fellowship, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign
Publications "Curatorial Dreams: Critics Imagine Exhibitions", McGill-Queen's University Press, 2016, "Jewish Space in Contemporary Poland", Indiana University Press, 2015, Na szczęście to Żyd / Lucky Jews: Poland's Jewish Figurines, Ha!art Press, 2014, Jewish Poland Revisited: Heritage Tourism in Unquiet Places, Indiana University Press, 2013, co-editor, Curating Difficult Knowledge: Violent Pasts in Public Places, Palgrave Macmillan, 2011,
References
External links
The Curating and Public Scholarship Lab Souvenir, Talisman, Toy exhibition website