MELISSA SHIFf (1967-2025)
A retrospective exhibition will be announced.
Lectures and Events
Oxford University Press Book Cover
Professor Michael Hoberman Author
Title: Imagining Early American Jews
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Shiff's Art from her project Mapping Ararat is the cover of Professor Michael Hoberman's book Imagining Early American Jews, Hoberman concludes his book with writing about Shiff's project.
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Stay tuned for book launch dates.
Forthcoming Exhibition- 2026
Imaginary Jewish Homelands
Center for Jewish History, New York, NY
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This exhibition will consist of four parts: First, a virtual reality station where participants can traverse through the 90 structures Shiff built with her team. Unlike other mediums these structures will be seen at full scale and the participant will be able to read part of I.N.Steinberg's vast archive. Second select documents from the YIVO archive that Shiff used to paper her houses will be on display in vitrines. Third, photographs shot on location at the very site Steinberg proposed will line the walls of the Museum. Forth, a video wall with a gaming station will allow viewers to navigate through each structure.
The partciipants will be afforded a space of wonder and ponder how history may have turned out differently if the Jewish people had escaped the Holocaust and landed in The Kimberley region of Australia.
Endowed Lecture
The Virtual Archive: Imagining I.N. Steinberg's Jewish Refuge in the Kimberley
Center for Jewish History, New York, NY
November 13, 2017
This presentation reviews an exciting collaborative project that constructs a virtual world to image and imagine I. N. Steinberg’s plans for a Jewish refugee settlement in the Kimberley region of Western Australia. This virtual world takes shape by mobilizing thousands of digitized documents from the Steinberg collection at the YIVO archives in an innovative and informative way.
Grant Winner
SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada)
2015
SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) awarded Melissa Shiff an Insight grant for the research and creation of her collaborative project: Imaginary Jewish Homelands..
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This project will utilize Viirtual Reality to imagine I.N. Steinberg's proposal to turn The Kimberly Region of North West Australia into a safe have for the Jewish People at the heigh of the Holocaust. Shiff utilizes Steinberg's archive to create paper houses for this failed utopia.
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This 5 year grant will culminate in the creation of a VR world, photomontages from images Shiff shot in the Kimberly, and a video wall where one can traverse through each digital model and read the meta data of each archival paper Shiff used to build this forgotten history.
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Stay tuned as the project progresses...
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Lecture
Mapping Ararat: Augmented Reality and the Imagining of a Jewish Homeland
Mahindra Humanities Centre at Harvard University, Cambridge, MA
April 6, 2013
Professors Melissa Shiff and Louis Kaplan have been invited to present "Mapping Ararat: Augmented Reality and the Imagining of a Jewish Homeland" as part of the workshop "Mining Imagination: Ethnographic Approaches Beyond Knowledge Production" to be held at the Mahindra Humanites Center, Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts. The workshop is on April 6th and it is organized by Dr. Michaela Schäuble (Post-Doctoral Fellow, Visual Anthropology). Other participants include Professors Lisa Cartwright, Andrew Irving, Kathryn Ramey and Paul Stoller.
Appointment
Research Associate at Sensorium: Centre for Digital Arts and Technology
York University, North York, ON
Fall 2014 - Present
In fall 2014, Shiff was appointed as a Research Associate at the Sensorium. In April 2015, she was awarded a SSHRC Research/Creation Insight Grant to take Imaginary Jewish Homelands global. Shiff and her team will be creating augmented reality walking tours in Port Davey, Tasmania; Kimberley, Western Australia; and the Saramacca district of Suriname.
Seminar
Mapping Ararat: Remembering an Imagined Jewish Homeland
Columbia University, New York, NY
February 3, 2014
We have been invited by Professor Marianne Hirsch to present Mapping Ararat at one of the most prestigious University seminar series in North America.
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We will speak for 45 minutes and screen our video: Mapping Ararat: Globally Positioned Sites. This will be followed by a second hour of discussion.
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This event is free and open to the public.
Workshop
Mapping Ararat: Reanimating History
Center for Jewish History, New York, NY
January 29, 2014
Mapping Ararat has been selected as one of four projects that will be featured at a workshop at The Center for Jewish History on January 29, 2014. The workshop explores case studies that transform visual and material culture drawn from the archive into public history and, in our case, into art as well.
Endowed Lecture
Samuel and Bettie Roberts Lecture in Jewish Art
Fairfield University, Fairfield, CT
November 13, 2009
Melissa Shiff has been invited to give the biannual endowed Samuel and Bettie Roberts Lecture in Jewish Art in the spring semester of 2009. More details to follow.
Workshop
Association for Jewish Studies Conference: Mapping Ararat Roundtable
Sheraton Hotel, Boston, MA​
December 16, 2013
Session Participants: Moderator: Jeffrey Shandler, (Rutgers University) Discussants: Jennifer Glaser (University of Cincinnati), Shelley Hornstein (York University), Todd Presner ( University of California, Los Angeles), Gavriel Rosenfeld (Fairfield University), Melissa Shiff (University of Toronto), Louis Kaplan (University of Toronto).
Lecture
Reanimating Ararat: Two Perspectives on Mordecai Noah's Jewish Homeland
Jackman Humanities Institute, Toronto, ON​
April 16, 2012
Appointment
Assistant Professor in Department of Jewish Studies
University of Toronto, Toronto, ON
July 1, 2011
Melissa Shiff has been appointed to a three year term in the Department of Art at the University of Toronto. Her title is Assistant Professor. During her tenure, her research will be focused on the SSHRC Insight Development Grant "Mapping Ararat."
Grant Winner
SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada)
2011
SSHRC (Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada) has awarded Melissa Shiff a major grant for the research and creation of her collaborative project: Mapping Ararat: An Imaginary Jewish Homelands Project.
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This project will utilize the cutting edge technology of augmented reality to imagine an alternative history for Grand Island New York creating an on site walking tour for this Jewish homeland originally proposed by Major Mordecai Noah in 1825.
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Shiff's collaborators are new media artist, Professor John Craig Freeman of Emerson College in Boston and photography and new media historian, Professor Louis Kaplan of University of Toronto.
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Grant Winner
Jewish Community Foundation of Montreal
2011
Melissa Shiff has been awarded a significant grant to mount The Medium is the Matzo in Montreal, Passover 2011, Concordia University.
Cover Art
Jews, God and Videotape
By Jeffrey Shandler
NYU Press, 2010
Excerpt, Page 172: " On occasion, a bride and groom conceptualize their wedding as an original work of art of their own making, in which mediation defines the structure of the celebration as forthrightly as religious protocol. Such was the case when media installation artist Melissa Shiff and her husband, art historian Louis Kaplan, planned their wedding, which took place in Toronto on 12 October 2003. Shiff describes the ceremony as a reinvented ritual, using "postmodern artistic strategies" that negotiate "between contemporary performance art and the customs of the traditional Jewish wedding."
Appointment
Adjunct Professor in Department of Jewish Studies
University of Toronto, Toronto, ON
Fall 2008
Melissa Shiff has recently been appointed Adjunct Professor in the Centre for Jewish Studies at the University of Toronto for a three year term. The appointment of Adjunct Professor is given only to distinguished individuals who have special expertise needed to complement academic programs.
Endowed Lecture
Objects of Affection: The Jewish Wedding in Media and Material Culture
Center for Jewish History, New York, NY
April 13, 2008
Melissa Shiff has been invited to give the biannual endowed Samuel and Bettie Roberts Lecture in Jewish Art in the spring semester of 2009. More details to follow.
Conference
Association for Jewish Studies Conference: Jewish Museums and Displays: New Directions, Obstacles and Opportunities
Toronto, ON
December 16 - 18, 2007
Displaying Judaica: Secularizing the Sacred
Reesa Greenberg lectures on ARK in her paper entitled:
Panel Chair: James E. Young
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Engaging Contemporary Art in Jewish Studies: A Scholar's Rountable with Three Contemporary Toronto Artists.
Organized by Professor Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett and Professor Jeffrey Shandler . Melissa Shiff will present her work and two scholars will also present on Shiff's projects --Shelley Hornstein and Chava Weissler
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Chair: Jeffrey Shandler
Artists: Melissa Shiff, Rafael Goldchain, and Meyer Kirshenblatt (with Barbara Kirshenblatt-Gimblett)
Panelists: Jonathan Boyarin, John Efron, Shelley Hornstein, Olga Litvak, Chava Weissler, and Carol Zemel