The international conference, `Jewish Art in Context: The Role of
Meaning of Artifacts and Visual Images' was held on January 14-16, 2008,
organized by the Goldstein-Goren Diaspora Research Center at Tel Aviv
University. This volume is a nutshell representation of some of the
papers that were held at the conference. The contributions offer a
survey of the achievements of Jewish art history as a new academic
discipline in the last one hundred years, seek to define the academic
goals in the present and venture to envision the contribution of Jewish
art and visual culture to the study of the history of the Jews, in the
future. Furthermore, it offers a historical and a futuristic glimpse
into concepts of Jewish museology, and sheds light on some new
discoveries and case-studies of Jewish art from various parts of the
Jewish diaspora.