LimmudFest New Orleans 2018

The French invented chic; Americans created cool. To call someone cool bestows upon them the supreme compliment of American culture. In 2014, the National Portrait Gallery of the Smithsonian presented American Cool, an acclaimed popular culture and photograph exhibit featuring one hundred icons and one hundred photographs. The curators defined an icon of cool as an artistic rebel who had a transformative impact on a generation and an artistic field through creative production, a signature style, and a radically new persona. Of the hundred icons – such as James Dean, Miles Davis, Patti Smith, and Jay-Z – eight were Jewish-Americans, including Bob Dylan, Lou Reed, Susan Sontag, and Jon Stewart. Curator Joel Dinerstein will discuss the history of the word and concept of cool going back to the 1940s and each of the eight Jewish-Americans who made the list.