So of course there are misunderstandings. For example, one newspaper implied that the show would include a Lego model of Auschwitz, when in fact, Mr. Kleeblatt said, ''there is no Lego model in the exhibition.'' But there is a work titled ''Lego Concentration Camp Set,'' which is seven empty Lego-like boxes whose covers show pictures of model death camps that the artist Zbigniew Libera made with Lego blocks. Mr. Libera, Mr. Kleeblatt explained, has ''some Jewish blood in his family,'' and his work is influenced by the theories of the French philosopher Michel Foucault. Or take Alan Schechner's piece, ''It's the Real Thing -- Self-Portrait at Buchenwald.'' In the catalog the work appears to be a photograph of Mr. Schechner hoisting a can of Diet Coke while concentration camp inmates look on. It is not, strictly speaking, a photograph, Mr. Kleeblatt stressed, but rather a Web-based piece of art.''It is a moving work,'' Mr. Kleeblatt said, especially if you know the context: the artist lost relatives in the Holocaust.
''That photograph of the liberation is part of his history,'' he added. ''He wanted to see what it would be like to be in that space. He is collapsing historical distance.''But should one build a show that demands so much context? Shouldn't the work speak for itself?This exhibition has only a dozen and a half pieces by 13 artists from 8 countries. And already the objects are being swamped by words. There are 20 catalog essays. The exhibition will include a video in which the artists speak about their work. The museum has issued a two-page bulletin about it, ''Key Distinctions between 'Mirroring Evil' and 'Sensation.' '' And then there will be the usual panel discussions, lectures, public dialogues, forums and films. Mr. Kleeblatt, who is the child of German Jewish refugees and whose paternal grandparents and maternal great-grandparents as well as uncles, aunts and cousins died in the Holocaust, said, ''I wish I could say that's why I'm doing this show.''''I grew up in a home where I realized that society can turn on you,'' he continued.
''Maybe that is why I am so vigilant about asking questions.'' But that was not the impetus for the show. A few years ago, he said, he noticed ''the changing face of what we call Holocaust art.''There was, he said, ''a certain group of works that incorporate Nazi imagery'' and that focus attention for the first time on the perpetrators rather than the victims. The first piece Mr. Kleeblatt encountered was the Auschwitz Lego by Mr. Libera. In 1996 ''it came across my desk,'' he said. ''It was offered for sale by a private dealer representing the artist.'' Mr. Kleeblatt presented it to the acquisitions committee of the Jewish Museum. ''There was an animated discussion, even debate,'' he said. But in the end the committee members recognized it ''as a work of art,'' he said, and as an educational tool. The museum bought it in 1997. ''It changed the nature of questions about the Holocaust,'' Mr. Kleeblatt said. With the Auschwitz Lego, he added, ''we are confronted with something we have great affection for: Lego.''
People see that ''we can take the same building blocks that we can use to make houses, resorts and shopping centers and construct extermination camps with them,'' he continued. It raises the issue, he observed, ''of how the Nazis perverted the most human instincts -- for shelter, family and beauty.''Soon after the museum acquired the Lego, other works started drifting in. In the late 1990's, Mr. Kleeblatt said, ''we noticed similar aesthetic structures'' in literature, theater and the movies. There was Bernhard Schlink's novel ''The Reader'' and Harold Pinter's play ''Ashes to Ashes.'' ''Happiness'' and ''Storytelling,'' films by Todd Solondz, traversed some of the same territory, Mr. Kleeblatt noted. The viewer, pushed into having all the wrong reactions, is implicated in the work. These works were raising ''tough questions about the images that have become icons of the Holocaust,'' Mr. Kleeblatt said. But having an exhibition on such pieces did not occur to him until after he went to ''Icon, Image and Text in Modern Jewish Culture,'' a conference at Princeton University.
Mr. Kleeblatt recalled thinking, ''This is really a new way the Holocaust is being discussed.'' The art was already out there, he said. And maybe that was a good enough reason for the Jewish Museum to show it: to tell people that such works are being made and to put them in context.But what about the reasons for not putting on such a show? ''We met with a number of people who thought that it's tough work,'' Mr. Kleeblatt said, skirting the question. They included educators, clergy members and artists. ''We talked about the fact that the work is powerful, that it needed to be contextualized, mediated,'' he added. ''We worked for a year to create a serious, thoughtful context.''And the verdict was that the Jewish Museum was ''the perfect place to show it,'' Mr. Kleeblatt said.''We have a duty to show new ideas and concerns about the Holocaust,'' Mr. Kleeblatt said. ''We know how to frame the questions in a serious way.''The museum has had other tough exhibitions: not only ''Too Jewish'' and ''The Dreyfus Affair,'' but also ''Bridges and Boundaries,'' about the relationship between Jews and blacks.
If material like this is going to be shown, then ''we can contextualize it,'' Mr. Kleeblatt said. ''What's important is that we're really scrutinizing the material, poring over the questions that this art asks or begs.''Mr. Kleeblatt listed five: ''How has popular culture represented Nazi evil? How can the mundane be made dangerous and the dangerous mundane? Who can speak about the Holocaust? How has art helped to break the silence about the Holocaust? And what are the limits of irreverence?'' It turns out that the Lego piece is the least of it. There is, for example, Tom Sachs's ''Giftgas Giftset,'' canisters of supposedly poison gas with labels bearing the names and logos of Chanel, Hermès and Tiffany & Company. When asked which piece in ''Mirroring Evil'' most bothered Mr. Kleeblatt personally, he said: ''I can't choose one.'' Each ''elicited a powerful emotional response,'' he said. ''I might say that there was not a piece that didn't.'' Each viewer is offended or touched by different pieces.
Take Mischa Kuball's ''Hitler's Cabinet,'' which consists of a large plywood cross. From the end of each wooden beam, lighted projections of German film stills are cast onto the floor, creating the overall image of a swastika. ''One person wasn't happy with that,'' Mr. Kleeblatt said. But one Holocaust survivor looked at Alain Séchas's piece ''Enfants Gâtés'' (''Spoiled Children'') -- a series of small white cat figurines with Hitler mustaches that sit in playpens, each holding a swastika in its paw -- and identified with the kitten.''She thought the kitten represented the loneliness of children in captivity,'' Mr. Kleeblatt recalled. Certain works were rejected for the show not because they were offensive but because ''they didn't fit with the theme,'' or ''they didn't make the point,'' Mr. Kleeblatt said. He explained that he wanted all the works to engage the viewer directly and that he wanted to ''to keep it to a certain age bracket.'' He chose artists 30 to 40 years old, the second or third generation after the Holocaust.That is why, for example, he chose not to include David Levinthal's photographs of toy Nazi soldiers that include one Nazi throwing a victim into an oven.
''He was the first person I went to,'' Mr. Kleeblatt said, but Mr. Levinthal was older than the oldest of these new artists. So was Shimon Attie, who projects ghostlike prewar images of Jews on buildings in Germany, and Art Spiegelman, the author of ''Maus,'' a novel of the Holocaust in comic-book form.This exhibition will also leave out Boris Lurie's ''Saturation Paintings,'' in which sexually suggestive photographs are mixed with pictures of concentration camps, and Anselm Kiefer's picture of himself giving a ''Heil, Hitler'' salute under a piece of public sculpture in Cologne. They are simply too old.Not one of the artists in ''Mirroring Evil'' experienced the Holocaust directly, and this is significant, Mr. Kleeblatt said. ''We have come to a point where fewer survivors are around,'' he observed, and where more and more of the information about the Holocaust is ''gleaned from popular culture,'' he added. This new generation ''learned the lessons of the Holocaust,'' Mr. Kleeblatt said, not in school and not from their parents but from cartoons and films.
Piotr Uklanski, represented in the show by ''The Nazis,'' an installation of old film stills of Hollywood stars playing Nazis, had a grandfather who fought on the German side in World War II. But he ''learned about the Holocaust from cartoons on Polish television in the 1970's,'' Mr. Kleeblatt said. This is very different from someone like Mr. Lurie, a Buchenwald survivor himself. The central question the new generation asks is: ''Where am I getting my information?'' These young artists are ''vigilant about popular culture and how we encounter imagery,'' Mr. Kleeblatt explained. They are interested in representations of reality. They want to know why, for example, the Nazis in movies look so glamorous.The artists may be vigilant about the images that have shaped them, but how vigilant can they be about the effects of their own imagery? And how vigilant can a curator really be? Indeed, how can anyone tell the difference between the work of a real Nazi sympathizer and a hip contemporary artist playing with the fire of popular culture?''