How are superheroes born? Through more than two hundred works, the exhibition ‘Superheroes Never Die. Comics and Jewish Memories’ tells how the American comic book has, since its beginning and until the present day, become inextricably linked with the tumultuous dynamics of history.
On the eve of World War II, a generation of Jewish-American cartoonists, so anxious to fit in that they often concealed their foreign-sounding surnames, created the most famous superheroes: Batman, Superman, Captain America and Spiderman. Almost a century later, these superheroes are still central characters in our contemporary cultures. Although the causes they defend have changed, the questions of identity and integration addressed since the 1930’s are still associated with them. For a society in crisis always needs its superheroes.
This exhibition is organised with the Musée d’art et d’histoire du Judaïsme Paris and the Joods Historisch Museum in Amsterdam.
