"There's a Mystery There: Sendak on Sendak" is currently on exhibit at the Contemporary Jewish Museum in San Francisco.
736 Mission Street (between Third and Fourth streets)
San Francisco, CA 94103
Telephone: 415.655.7800
Website: http://www.thecjm.org
Ticket information: https://tickets.thecjm.org/public
About Maurice Sendak:
Maurice Sendak has written or illustrated more than 100 picture books over his 60-year career. A number of those books, including Where the Wild Things Are, In the Night Kitchen, and Chicken Soup with Rice, inspired generations of children and changed the landscape of picture books.
Sendak was born in Brooklyn in 1928, the youngest of three children. His parents, poor Jewish immigrants from Eastern Europe, suffered greatly from the loss of many family members in Poland during the Holocaust. The sadness and complexities of the Holocaust, the rich memories of his parent's lives in Europe, and his own childhood experiences with his Jewish relatives, are currents that run through all of Sendak's work. The exhibition explores a number of different aspects of Sendak's books including his child characters, monsters, literary and artistic influences, and the settings of his stories. Visitors will delve into the hidden nuances and personal secrets within Sendak's work through exclusive interviews with the artist on digital touch screens throughout the exhibition. As Sendak himself said in one such interview, "When you hide another story in a story, that's the story I am telling the children." These hidden stories within Sendak's work form the core experience of There's a Mystery There.
