LOS ANGELES, CA.- Driven into Paradise: L.A.’s European Jewish Émigrés of the 1930s and 1940s, the first exhibition to focus exclusively on the major contributions that Jewish exiles made to the cultural foundation of Los Angeles, will be on view at the Skirball Cultural Center from February 3 through May 8, 2005. The exhibition traces the dramatic and highly personal journeys of eleven talented men and women as they escaped from Nazi-dominated Europe, adjusted to life in the United States and became leading figures in the burgeoning cultural landscape of Los Angeles, in particular Hollywood. On display will be informative and interactive graphic panels exhibiting musical scores, manuscripts, novels, letters and photographs, along with film and music clips, drawn from archives in Los Angeles, Berlin and Vienna. Together these materials convey a profound sense of personal and artistic freedom made possible by the émigrés’ new surroundings of Southern California.

The émigrés whose lives and careers are highlighted in the exhibition are filmmakers Michael Curtiz and Billy Wilder, composers Arnold Schoenberg and Ernst Toch, artists Otto and Gertrud Natzler, art collector Galka Scheyer and writers Vicki Baum, Lion Feuchtwanger, Salka Viertel and Franz Werfel. With the rise of Nazism, these luminaries, ranking among the cultural elite in their homelands, either fled Europe and sought refuge in Los Angeles or were living in Los Angeles and became political refugees when stripped of their European citizenship. For practical as well as creative reasons, many émigrés were compelled to work in the nascent, lucrative film industry of Hollywood. Yet, even as they found a safe haven in Los Angeles, some of them were officially considered “enemy aliens” by the U.S. government. As exiles, they were forced to re-conceptualize the very meaning of freedom.

“This exhibition explores the many forces at work in the lives of these culture shapers, whose experiences as European Jewish émigrés reveal both triumph and pathos,” explained Lori Starr, Senior Vice President of the Skirball Cultural Center and Director of the Skirball Museum. “Displaced from their own lands, they came to the United States despite the Johnson-Reed Act of 1924, which had shut the doors on immigration to America. How they managed to make a life in L.A. is part of their remarkable story.”

Starr continued, “What they created had an impact that extended well beyond Los Angeles, influencing the world’s view of American cinema, music, literature and art. Given our institution’s mission to explore the connections between 4,000 years of Jewish heritage and the vitality of American democratic ideals, we are proud to explore the immigration experience of these political and cultural exiles and their means for artistic expression in a new land.”

Art collector Galka Scheyer (1889–1945) expressed her individual sense of freedom through her tireless promotion of modernism, Hitler’s despised art. In particular, it was through her collecting efforts that the Blue Four artists—among them Wassily Kandinsky and Paul Klee—received significant attention in the United States. In a much different way, the politically active writer Lion Feuchtwanger (1884–1958) embraced his newfound freedom through his varied humanitarian efforts. These included actively speaking out against Fascism, supporting the founding of a Jewish state, and helping individuals escape from Nazi Europe and come to the United States. Feuchtwanger did all of this as an enemy alien who never received American citizenship.