After back-to-back storms dumping triple-digit centimeters of snow on the cityscape—and more than a week of punishing wind chills—it’s natural that Montrealers, typically intrepid winter dwellers, should retreat indoors for a spell. It’s also a perfect time to cast one’s inner eye towards sunnier climes and simpler times.
It’s a happy accident that Shtetl in the Sun, the Museum of Jewish Montreal’s (MJM) winter exhibition embracing a decades-long connection between Jews and Miami, launched Feb. 20 at the museum digs in the iconic former Lux nightspot on The Main, a warm escape from Montreal’s prolonged winter doldrums.
Shtetl in the Sun: Andy Sweet’s South Beach 1977-1980 with Jonah Strub takes visitors on a tourthrough the candy-coloured photos of Andy Sweet, on loan from the Jewish Museum of Florida-FIU, coupled with ceramics by Toronto-based artist Jonah Strub.
Together, the works highlight the instantly recognizable North American Jewish snowbird, whose vibrancy resonates across time, regions, and generations, says MJM artistic director Alyssa Stokvis-Hauer. It’s no coincidence that Andy Sweet’s photos have been brought to life by another artist working decades later in a different country, from a completely different context.
“It’s this real celebration and sort of noticing how this aesthetic of this group of people in the 1960s, ‘70s, ‘80s, down in Florida. Many of them, Holocaust survivors, who come from very difficult times, are leaning into this high camp, joyful aesthetic, which I think really makes it so beautiful.”
Strub concurs, telling The CJN, “due to both my and Andy’s similar cultural references and upbringing, even though we grew up in different countries decades and generations apart, this draw to theatricality, glitz, and veneration of the women in our lives that exuded these qualities is palpable through our artistic connections.”
“There is a real tenderness and joy in the way Andy Sweet captures his subjects as a street photographer,” added Stokvis-Hauer. “The series shows a community full of colour and vibrancy—a lust-for-life esthetic that is made more poignant given how many of these retirees would have been affected by the Holocaust.”
The beaches of Florida have long been a popular destination for sun-seeking Quebecers, edging Flori-Bec into the local lexicon (later La Florida), and was the stuff of sweet memories for many. But whether your recollections of vintage ‘70s Miami is lunching at Wolfie’s, schlepping through Lincoln Mall, playing bumper pool at Flamingo Park, or dodging deflated blue jelly fish strewn on the hot surf, the 52-photograph collection by street photographer Sweet in conversation with Strub’s sculptures of exaggerated and exuberant bubbies at the pool and in strip malls, reminds you that it all wasn’t a daydream.
Indeed, this beautiful, carefree land of beaches, tramways, up-dos and zinc nose block, where grandparents dragged precious visiting grandkids down hot pavement to buy tchotchkes drew a generation of Jews with some time and some cash to enjoy a good life. The positive vibe that reigns between dark chapters of Jewish history, when nothing horrible is happening to Jews in North America, allowed them to thrive, head south, buy or rent a condo and spend hours over a tanning mirror and playing cards by day, wearing gaudy jewelry, and maybe heading out to the Fontainebleau by night.
Sweet’s photos are small, 13 x 13, allowing visitors to get up close and personal, like a simple frame on a living room wall or credenza. There are no accompanying captions or descriptions. The exhibition, in town until the end of April, was originally designed, says Stokvis-Hauer, “to not skew the impression for each viewer… and instead let them feel and decide the narrative themselves.”
“Everyone can come to this exhibition and get something out of it,” she says. “They see either a little bit of themselves or of their family. If they’re not Jewish, they still recognize this snowbird. It crosses a whole lot of different cultures, times, and regions, which is really lovely, especially in the middle of winter.”
The exhibit toured a number of different Jewish museums in the U.S. and was last on display in Florida in 2019, a year after the release of The Last Resort documentary featuring Sweet and fellow photographer Gary Monroe seeking to capture the last vestiges of a Jewish retirement paradise.
“It’s also the first time we are bringing in an exhibition on loan from another Jewish museum, so on a more institutional level, that’s very exciting for us,” Stokvis-Hauer said.
Sweet, who died in 1982, was born and raised in the neighbourhoods surrounding South Beach, this photographic series a tribute to the people who lived and played there. “Andy places this community within the broader context of South Beach,” said Stokvis-Hauer, “showing us how this camp sensibility inspired and is inspired by youth and queer cultures of the time. As shown in Jonah’s sculptures, it continues to inspire, resonate, and be celebrated by those same communities and broader pop culture today.”
Strub makes his sculptural ceramics a love letter to kitsch, drag, and Yiddish humour. But he wasn’t familiar with Sweet’s photographs until the Montreal Jewish Museum invited him to participate in this show—and he felt an immediate emotional connection to his subjects.
The ceramic works sit among the photos as tongue-in-cheek markers of time and place, bearing titles like “The Universal Jewish Experience of Getting Yelled at in a Pool by an Old Woman in Florida.”
Strub says the influence of Jewish producers, directors, composers, and performers of the last century lead “to a strong representation of characters and themes that use Jewish tropes and worldview.” He says the most iconic divas embody a “Yiddishkeit je ne sais quoi.”
Au contraire, he knows exactly what it is: “Loud opinions, overbearing maternal instincts, worry, guilt, extreme enthusiasm for leopard print, and huge hair are all subtle markers for Jewishness that may fly over a gentile head.”
The exhibition is also a stop on Montreal’s annual citywide Nuit Blanche arts festival, with a special March 1 event featuring rapper and producer Socalled spinning vintage Miami vinyl at the museum Saturday night.
