‘Exploring Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Jewish Pale of Settlement’ Opens at Yiddish Book Center

AMHERST — The Yiddish Book Center, located on the Hampshire College campus in Amherst, announced the opening of its latest visiting exhibition, “Exploring Pregnancy and Childbirth in the Jewish Pale Settlement” by artist Debra Olin.

Olin’s large-format monoprint collages take inspiration from the 1912-1914 ethnographic questionnaire produced by the playwright S. An-sky. Olin focuses on An-sky’s questions relating to pregnancy and childbirth, highlighting superstitions, precautions, and religious practices that can be translated, recognized, and appreciated by people from every culture.

“Exploring Pregnancy and Childbirth” is now on view in the Yiddish Book Center’s Brechner Gallery. The public is invited to a free gallery talk with Olin at 1 p.m. on Sunday, Oct. 23 as part of the Yiddish Book Center’s Fall Community Day.

Olin is a printmaker living and working in Somerville. She received her MFA from Massachusetts College of Art in 1980 and has shown in exhibitions across the U.S., Canada, France, Poland, Serbia, South Africa, and Cuba. Her work is in the permanent collections of the Boston Public Library, Temple Israel in Brookline, the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln, Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, and YIVO Institute in New York City. In 2004, she was awarded the Rappaport Prize, the largest public annual award to an individual artist in New England. In 2018, she received a Massachusetts Cultural Council Finalist Award and a grant from the Berkshire Taconic Artist Resource Trust.