Shebrew in the City
Shebrew in the City is a podcast exploring all things Jewish. Combining interviews and informational episodes, join Nicole Kelly as she discusses her journey with motherhood, spirituality, and everything from Hanukkah to the Holocaust. Giving a voice to modern Jews and spreading love and joy, whether you're Jewish, Jew-ish, or not anything resembling Jewish at all, there's something here for everyone.
Shebrew in the City
"Art Isn't Easy" - An Interview with Beatrice Levine
What happens when an art historian discovers Nazi memorabilia being sold at auction houses without ethical consideration? For Beatrice Levine, it sparked a journey that would transform her career and personal identity.
Growing up as a military child in Germany during the 1990s, Beatrice developed a natural curiosity about Holocaust history and her own Jewish heritage. Though her father was ethnically Jewish, her family practiced the cultural aspects rather than religious observance – what Beatrice colorfully describes as "that East Coast big, lox-loving Jewish family" where everyone watched Seinfeld and said "oy" but didn't attend synagogue. This early exposure to German history planted seeds that would later bloom in unexpected ways.
After pursuing art history and landing positions at prestigious auction houses, Beatrice witnessed disturbing practices surrounding Nazi artifacts and potentially looted artwork. The auction world's casual approach to selling items like Hermann Göring's weapons and Nazi tableware created what she calls "a queasy feeling" that eventually led her to specialize in provenance research – tracking the ownership history of artworks to identify those stolen during the Holocaust. The resistance she encountered when raising ethical concerns revealed how deeply rooted these problems were in the art world.
When academic institutions pushed back against her research focus, Beatrice found her way to specialized Holocaust studies programs, ultimately pursuing a PhD focused on these ethical questions. Perhaps most remarkably, she formally converted to Judaism in 2023, completing her Mikvah ceremony just one month after the October 7 attacks – a decision that speaks volumes about her commitment to this path.
Today, Beatrice balances serious academic work with a lighthearted approach to art history on her popular social media accounts. Her "Culture Quota" Instagram follows her mantra of providing "safe spaces" where people can enjoy art and culture as a respite from constant heaviness, while still occasionally addressing serious historical topics.
Whether discussing the ethical dilemmas of inherited Nazi artifacts or sharing her favorite Real Housewives moments, Beatrice brings authenticity and depth to every conversation. Her story reminds us that confronting difficult history isn't just an academic exercise – it's deeply personal work that can transform both individual lives and our collective understanding of the past.
What artifacts from difficult periods of history do you have questions about? Join the conversation and let us know how you navigate these complex ethical waters.
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Beatrice Levine:I love that. I mean, everybody needs a hype girl. I need to be my own hype girl more you do you do?
Nicole Kelly:I was so nervous to reach out to you because we're in our second class together now and you're such an eloquent writer and I was so intimidated by your posts at school. I was like I don't know, I'm nervous, I wish everyone could see my face right now.
Beatrice Levine:It just dropped. I have never thought of myself as an eloquent writer. And then I went to grad school and I started grad school, which we'll get into. I was told repeatedly how bad my writing was, really.
Nicole Kelly:I feel like the problem with my writing is I'm very direct, which I'm told is good for academic writing, so clearly I'm going into the right field. But I feel like I want to zhuzh things up a little bit and then I have my husband look at it and he uses very descriptive language and I'm like no, that's too, that's too descriptive.
Beatrice Levine:So trying to find the historian in me. Everything is like super flowery and like lots of adjectives.
Nicole Kelly:No, I'm like this is what happened Then, this was the cause of it and this is what happened after. And that's kind of how I write. I write very nonfiction-y, so I'm.
Beatrice Levine:See, I need more of that I need more of that Hemingway-esque.
Nicole Kelly:We have to. We have to. We have to meet in the middle. Um, anyways, we'll, we'll get into a grad school, and all that later. Um, so I usually start off by asking my guests, uh, where they are originally from and if, uh, they had a Jewish upbringing and what that upbringing was like. Like, did you have a mitzvah? Did you go to temple? All of that.
Beatrice Levine:Oh my gosh, I feel like this is going to be the longest part of the podcast.
Nicole Kelly:We've got time. Don't worry about it, we've got plenty of time.
Beatrice Levine:So I don't know if you know this about me, but I'm actually an army brat, I remember reading that, yeah. And so I grew up all over. So I was like born in Arizona but lived there for three months, and I've written about this before. We moved to like former Eastern B germany in december of 93 so I was born in october of 93, aging myself here, and then we moved to germany like december of 93.
Beatrice Levine:So I really was not familiar with america. I have been to arizona since then and have like no connection to it, but I spent the majority of my life in germany actually. So I was there a small, small child from like ages like three or zero to three, like Vilsack, wurzburg, places like that, like all big installation names, if anyone's like military affiliated. And then we moved to Jacksonville, florida, for a little while. My mother and father went to school in North Florida. So I think that was their first attempt, and sort of like misguided attempt, to be like why don't we be closer to family? Would that be nice? And then after about a year they were like this is not for us. Who wants to be close to family when you could be living overseas? So we moved back to Germany, to a place called Heidelberg. Then we were in Kansas for a little while, which is where the Kansas connection kind of starts. Then to England for two years during like Operation iraqi freedom and, you know, the wars in afghanistan.
Beatrice Levine:So I was um there post 9-11, which is a weird way to like like slice up your life, but like pre and post 9-11 if you're a military person is like a very big indicator of time. It's like post 9-11. We were in england for two years and then back to heidelberg, germany, and that's where I spent like fifth grade all the way through high school, so that's where I was the longest in terms of the jewish upbringing also very odd.
Beatrice Levine:So I would say I'm like what you would call like ethnically jewish. So like, obviously my last name is levine, my dad is jewish ethnically, his dad is jewish. He had a bar mitzvah and then that's where sort of like observation stopped in our family and we very much became like that East Coast big, low-locks Jewish family. I'm like, no, we don't observe anything and no, you and your sister aren't Jewish, but like we're going to watch Seinfeld all the time and everyone's going to say, oy, and it was just very much that. And I really connected with that growing up, like I was especially growing up, like I was especially growing up in germany.
Nicole Kelly:I was like the weird kid who was like fascinated by like the holocaust and frank and like you know, and I'm like you know my feelings on in frank um, we had a whole conversation about and frank yes, and but it was like I was like doing the math of like oh, she was alive not that long ago and she was born in frankfurt, which I go to all the time.
Beatrice Levine:Right, like it was really having like personal connection to her and so constantly asking things about like our Jewish heritage and constantly being like like I wanted a bat mitzvah and I wanted a sweet 16 and my dad's mom's portugese, I wanted quinceanera, like I wanted all of it, and it was just very much like no, no, no, no.
Beatrice Levine:Like you're good, you're fine the way you are. And when I got into my late twenties I was going through a breakup and I had read that Sarah Hurwitz, who wrote her fantastic book, had started her Jewish journey after the White House, her time at the White House. Because she was going through a breakup and just like wanted something to do. And I was like you know what For like, for like 28, I was like maybe I should start looking into like finally, like my the jewish heritage I have in my family, like I was, I've always just been so drawn to it and like she went through a breakup when she was going through this I'm going through a breakup, like maybe this will give me time, something to do, and so I reached out to the urj and they connected me with a rabbi who was in Topeka, because there have been Jews in Topeka.
Beatrice Levine:I was in Kansas at the time, so it's like the 1800s.
Nicole Kelly:What is the name of this rabbi? Samuel Stern? Okay, because they're one of the rabbis at my synagogue. I feel like her father-in-law is one of the few rabbis in Kansas, and I'm going to, yeah, yeah, so this one of the few rabbis in kansas, and I'm going to, yeah, yeah, so this it, and I think he's a reform rabbi. So, yes, I feel like. I feel like we talked about this um, on my episode with her cool.
Nicole Kelly:He's very young, he's new to the temple and so if he's young, no, not no, this is like an older person.
Beatrice Levine:So, and he's retiring well, he's definitely going to be out here in kansas somewhere because kansas city has a big jewish community, which we'll get into later, I'm sure. But they kind of plopped me on his desk and they're like, hey, this girl who's at ku is interested because, weirdly, even though he has a large jewish community, there's no temple in lawrence, like there's no services like that. There's a very big halal and like a big khabar, but nothing else. And so he's like, okay, why don't we have you go through like the full conversion process? Like you were never, you clearly jewish, you know, you clearly have that spark like that sarah harris talks about, but you were not bat mitzvahed, you didn't grow up in the temple like you didn't, you know, do the holidays. Like why don't we have you go through the whole conversion process? I think that'll be very meaningful for you.
Beatrice Levine:And so I was going through the whole conversion process, finished up, I was a month away from my mikvah ceremony and 10-7 happened. So then I he I think he thought I was gonna stop, I really think he thought I was gonna be like, okay, I can't do it, like it's real now. And I said, no, I still would like to go through with my mikvah ceremony. And so a month after 10-7 I went to the mikvah and became like a full jewish woman, like on paper. So I would say like that was my bat mitzvah so I never had to have one but that one really felt that really felt as close to it as you can get.
Nicole Kelly:Did the mikvah charge you like five hundred dollars?
Beatrice Levine:I'm so lucky, I have no idea, because I was a con, because I'm technically like a convert or whatever.
Nicole Kelly:No, the mikvah here the mikvah here for conversions charges like five hundred dollars, like no joke, the Upper West Side Mikva, because I spoke I saw this on their website and I spoke to someone who I know who just converted. They're like nah, it was hundreds of dollars to go, did they?
Beatrice Levine:they paid for it.
Nicole Kelly:They had to pay for it Like out of pocket.
Beatrice Levine:No, not me.
Nicole Kelly:Very lucky, clearly you need to go to a Mikva in Kansas. Then yeah, very lucky, clearly you need to go to a mcfun kansas.
Beatrice Levine:Then, yeah, my rabbi pulled up in his tesla and he was like, let's do it. And all my girlfriends were there, his wife was in there with me. It was amazing. So, no, I I'm sure it cost money, but I have no idea amazing.
Nicole Kelly:I love that and I love that you decided to do that in the wake of 10 7, when it's a terrifying time to be a jewish person everywhere well, you know what I?
Beatrice Levine:I think I told Rabbi Stern this and I really did think he thought I was like maybe going to be like okay, like let's pump the brakes on this. I was a Jewish person who grew up in Germany in the 90s after World War II, Like if that didn't scare me out of it nothing was going to.
Nicole Kelly:Are you fluent in German?
Beatrice Levine:No, so I wouldn't say I'm like conversationally fluent. I was much more so like in high school and right out of college. But my um reading of German is actually very good, thank god, and I always say I'm really good at reading what I call like um, like a goon German. So, like you know, when someone's a gangster they have goons. Because the Nazis had so many like coded words for things like the big one's action, right, anytime there was some kind of nefarious operation was called an action you know using like they would use like yeah, this like weird coded language.
Beatrice Levine:And also something I really figured out reading primary sources from them is they're not very smart sorry, I'm choking on my water so like you'll get like a phd who's like ahead of a nine stats group and like writing back in formal german about something and then you'll get like like a child's level of german responding to them that sounds so yeah, it weirdly was like a lot really easy for me to read their german because it was about the same level of german that makes me feel better because you know you have to take that like aptitude test to get your doctorate and I'm like well got to start learning German, I guess.
Beatrice Levine:So this happened to me when I was at the University of Kansas, originally doing an art history MA. They had me take a German like language aptitude test and I warned my advisor. I said I'm not going to pass this. And she's like what do you mean? Like you grew up in Germany, I've heard you speak German. I said yeah, but you guys are giving me an academic article that had been written in the past like 10 years in German for our history. So like the highest level of German you can think of talking about modern art in an academic journal. I was like that is not the German. I read, yeah, and they had a very hard time understanding that Interesting. And then I got the most German response ever. I translated it like the passage or whatever. They gave it to a german professor to grade. She gave it back to me. She said you technically understood and translated everything correctly, but you didn't capture the academic tone of the german.
Nicole Kelly:so I'm going to fail you oh my gosh, well, well, better start learning that german in anticipation of reading some interesting reports.
Beatrice Levine:I'm on Duolingo every day with it still.
Nicole Kelly:I got to learn German, Anyways. So going back to that, what branch of the military were your parents in?
Beatrice Levine:So my dad was in the Army. He was a Marine right out of high school. So he did four years in the Marine Corps, got out, did ROTC at the University of Florida for the Army full-ride scholarship Like really amazing. That's where he met my mom, because I would say my dad is, you know, a Puerto Rican Jew from the Bronx.
Beatrice Levine:And then he met a lovely Southern belle you know, in North Florida who was from North Florida there and then he was in the Army for over 25 years. I think, wow, my whole life yeah.
Nicole Kelly:Five or 16 years on earth and I'm an older sibling, so her whole life too. That is a long time. Both my grandfather served in world war II and and my husband's grandfather served as well and in um Korea, and his great grandfather was killed in action in world war. Ii Um over. He was shot down in a plane. I don't know the specifics, but um by the Japanese.
Beatrice Levine:Well, my mom like it's so interesting that my mom ended up marrying my dad because her dad, her parents, had her at 40, which you'll love this. As a mother, I'll never forget when I put, like did the math as a kid and I was like, wait a minute. So like your sister's 11 years older than you and your brother's 15 years older than you and your other brother's 20 years older than you, and I looked at her when I years old and went.
Nicole Kelly:So you were a mistake. And she's like, yeah, yeah, technically my grandparents had a, had a baby like that. My grandmother was pregnant on her 20th anniversary when, like she would have been like she which, okay, looking back on it, she was a year younger than me and they acted like this was this miracle thing. Like, oh, 38 year old having her, well, this is a big deal like my grandmother.
Beatrice Levine:My grandfather got married, so my mom's dad was in world war two. That's where I'm getting at with this. He was a marauder, you know, in the Pacific theater and earned a purple heart. He was injured and actually ended up dying in the nineties when I was one years old, because he had issues with his heart and they cut him open and whatever. Like some fungus from like Burma had gotten inside of him during that time and just like grew on his heart for years and years and years. So even though he had a purple heart like a bronze heart, that's that still ended up killing him. Isn't that crazy? Like decades later. But same thing with my grandma, it's like. You know, they got back. He got back from war. She's there. She's like what? Barely 18 years old, they start having kids immediately.
Beatrice Levine:So when she's having my mom at 40 everyone's like oh my god.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, it was a very, very different time. Yeah, my grandparents my grandmother was 17 when they got married, because he was about to ship out and she like graduated high school. Then they immediately got married. Um, because that's what you did.
Beatrice Levine:I'm pretty sure my grandma was like working at the piggly wiggly, like writing letters in the war, like the whole thing is nuts I mean, I love me some world war ii history, aside from the holocaust stuff.
Nicole Kelly:I feel like I have though I have very visceral reactions to world war one films like very visceral reactions like I feel like in another life. I was in like a trench somewhere because I can't it I, I don't know. It's very strange have you been to the? World war one museum in kansas city. I have never been to kansas city um, you will die.
Beatrice Levine:That museum is huge, like people. It's kind of like the holocaust museum in dc or people like I wish I had like four days to go through it.
Nicole Kelly:I I'm a big world war one fan which, when I have, you know, another life and can get a second master's, maybe we'll. We'll do that, um. So I want to jump into talking about art and how you got started with that as an army brat living all over the place and you being an artist, and how you became interested specifically in art history as opposed to like studying art itself oh wait, could you repeat that real quick?
Nicole Kelly:sorry, my headphones no no, so I want to get started um talking about your, your history with art and art history and you as an artist, and why you decided to study art history as opposed to like making art I love this question because I am technically actually not an artist.
Beatrice Levine:Which people think our historians and artists are like one of the same all the time because so many are. But there is, like I would say, the larger portion of our historians are actually not artists. We're just people who are obsessed with artists because we can't do it those who can't do teach whole thing yes, I mean, like that's kind of the big tension between, like art historians and art critics and like artists.
Beatrice Levine:It's like, well, they can't do it, like you know they're. They're the ones who are like deciding who falls where and who's important to study whatever. Like most of them aren't artists, and I'd say that's like true. So essentially, what happened was I was in high school, I I was going to Heidelberg American High School on the base in Germany, in Heidelberg, germany, and I had to get an arts credit to graduate and I did not want to take like pottery or drawing. I just knew it would be a nightmare for me and I was just like there's no way I'm going to spend a semester drawing, right I'm so sorry, she's a german shepherd.
Nicole Kelly:Oh, she protects this home. It's fine. We have little dogs and they we had a dog, so do passed away a year and a half ago and he it's. I loved that dog and my daughter's sister. She started introducing herself to people and immediately talking about our dead dog um, like at the park. I do that too, but he, he was.
Nicole Kelly:She's almost forced. It's a little weird, um, but he it's. The house is much quieter now that he is not around, though I see another dachshund eventually in our future, so okay so we don't want to do drawing. I totally get that.
Beatrice Levine:No, like I don't want to do like drawing, I don't want to do pottery like it was going to be, like I knew that that let me just put this way, I'm so was such a future academic that I was like I would rather take AP art history than do like drawing that's fair it was like so backwards to everyone around me.
Beatrice Levine:So I took AP art history and I took it weirdly like the stars aligned. I had a lot of friends in that class as well, and around halfway through the first semester, because I mean, this is the beauty of growing up overseas our teacher was very smart and she said why don't we all we don't have to do like an official field trip because that'll never get approved and like the money won't come through, but why don't we all just book a Ryanair flight on the same weekend to Pisa? Because you know.
Beatrice Levine:Ryanair flights like six euros and we'll stay in the hostel and we'll all we'll look at all this art that we were seeing. So I was everyone's like, yeah, and of course I had already been to Italy, which sounds fancier than it is, but really when you're over there your whole life, it is like an 80 euro flight right there and back. So I'd already been to Florence and Rome. So for this high school trip we went to Pisa, in Florence, and I just had this like awakening, because it was all things I had seen before, like I'd already been to the Duomo, I'd seen that, I'd gone to the Academia and seen the David and like gone to, you know, the Bargello and seen Donatello's David. But having the knowledge of what I was actually looking at completely changed the experience and I remember I just was, was like had an epiphany of like this is what I want to do, interesting, I'm so obsessed with this.
Beatrice Levine:And then, months later, when we took the ap exam, I was in our high school auditorium no ac in germany like all the windows open, it's like 90 degrees out. I'm, like you know, banging through the test, having the best time of my life, and like, how high school is this like go outside and my best friend, he's like sitting on the roof of like one of these like trailers that we have for like extra classrooms, like thinking like oh, I'm so cool, like sitting up here moodily on this trailer, and he's like how's your test go? And I said, honestly, I was like five a five hour exam, and if I could have done that for like six more hours I would have. And he looked at me dead in the face and goes well, then, that's what you should do. And so I had applied to the University of Kansas. I got there and I was like this is, I'm not an English major anymore, I'm not a history major. And I've been so lucky until grad school.
Nicole Kelly:I have never changed do this every night and I think that you know, regardless of my career transition, I think some people know from a very early age what they're called to in some in some capacity. That's so interesting that your friend was like yep that's obviously what you need to do with your life.
Beatrice Levine:I mean how? And that one's funny because, like I know, I've told that story before, but now, being 31, looking back on that story, I'm like how 18 year old is that? So an 18 year old says to one you should do that and the other one goes you know what you're right, and then they literally base their whole life around that conversation.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, I mean, thankfully it was not something that was worse or different I don't know. I don't know like I'm gonna be like a professional diver and I also have a fear of swimming or something you know yeah, it worked out, and I love that he was sitting on a trailer, because that's just what they did in the 2000s and they would just add these trailers to schools because they were Even on military bases in Germany.
Nicole Kelly:Our extra classrooms were trailers like by the field. Yeah, I definitely had trailer classes. So you studied art history in college and what did you do with an art history degree, like, what kind of jobs did you have after you graduated with your initial degree, your bachelor's?
Beatrice Levine:So that's an interesting question, because that's like the number one thing. Like people would say to me all the time, oh so you're going to teach, and they would say like it's a bad thing. First of all, there's nothing wrong with teaching art history. Like, if you get an art history degree and you want to teach it at the high school level, the college level, whatever, that's totally valid, so let people stop. You would be like you're just gonna teach, there's nothing wrong with teaching. But there are a lot of things you can do. The issue is whether those things are available or not to you.
Beatrice Levine:So these like institutions are kind of like legacy institutions and once people get into them they never leave. So I got really, really lucky that I when I first started applying I started like halfway through my senior year and I was applying to everything Like I applied to do co-check at the museum of contemporary art in Chicago because I was in Chicago at the time at Loyola Right. Like I was willing to. I just all I was looking for was a part-time job at like a museum, a gallery, a foundation, like anything arts associated. I just wanted to get my foot in the door.
Nicole Kelly:So I applied like anything arts associated I just wanted to get my foot in the door so I applied to do like the gift shop at the mca by the way spoiler alert didn't get that job. I'm like I applied to do coat check, didn't get that. It's a competitive fields coat checking.
Beatrice Levine:It's crazy if you know what they told me for coat check, which I've talked about this on my uh instagram before. They told me it was too qualified for coat checks but I'd be great as a volunteer like tour guide. I'm like no, I don't think you understand.
Beatrice Levine:I need money yeah, that volunteers don't get paid right, and so eventually I applied to do it was on a website. People were like where did you find this job? It literally was just on their website. It was at for an auction house in the west loop called Heidman auctions and it was just to be part-time, the work in the front desk, and I applied, interviewed, had a great interview. Didn't know I didn't get it, just got a phone call one day saying like hey, we'd love to hire you and I'm like awesome, found out after I started they had hired somebody else and within a couple of days it was like really apparent that like this job was a lot of answering phone calls and a lot of dealing with people who were angry in front of you and like she just needed some support, like she's definitely not got like the right background for this, whereas I had worked like I was working in a gym at the time like I had worked all kinds of like crazy jobs, like part-time jobs I was.
Beatrice Levine:I had been yelled at my whole time, my whole life like in college working, so I had no problem jumping in there with her. So I ended up getting hired after the fact, so always tell people like it's not necessarily just when you think it's over?
Nicole Kelly:it's not necessarily over, like I didn't actually even get hired for this job.
Beatrice Levine:but I got hired eventually, so I was on there answering like 200 phone calls a day and working my gym job you know part-time. I just graduated and within a month of working at the auction house part-time answering phones, they said we'd like to hire you uh, full-time, which was great so I did that for about a year, maybe a year and a half, and then I moved on to a different department within the auction house, again not necessarily art related.
Beatrice Levine:I was in a department called luxury goods, so that handled like couture and jewelry, and that was amazing that's art.
Nicole Kelly:I, I am me. Thank you I don't wear a lot of jewelry because I play with things like I break necklaces and I hate bracelets, but I have a huge affinity for jewelry, like if you showed me a tiara that belonged to the queen of england, I could tell you what it's called it's like a weird party trick I have. I'm like oh, that's the girls of great britain and ireland, tiara, obviously like why wouldn't you which is my favorite, by the way you can?
Nicole Kelly:google the girls of great britain and ireland and that's my favorite um and it was her grandmother's originally and it was a gift from like a girls association yeah but I loved, I would love that. I would have wanted to steal everything that's amazing.
Beatrice Levine:Oh yeah, it was the. It was the best fit for me. I mean, that's always my advice to people when they get their history degree and they go into the field is I'm like, you know, you need to be open-minded. I met so many people, especially young women, who are like, yeah, I'm doing this job right now in this department, but like I really want to get into, like you know, fine art or like prints or whatever, and I'm like, 99% of that time, those are like departments that are almost all men and they've all been there for a thousand years and like, until somebody dies, there's not going to be an opening. So, like, be open to like a different department or like a different genre, right, or whatever. Because I really connected with both the director from both of those departments and I grew such an appreciation for jewelry. I was already super into fashion and clothing and couture, which it's so crazy that we still have this conversation. Our history of like is couture, you know.
Nicole Kelly:Well, I told you that exhibit I went to at the Jewish museum. It was a Chloe exhibit which, because my sister's very into fashion, so she was like I want to go to this. So we went and I had never been before and downstairs was like this really modern art thing with like fluorescent tape on like a mattress and I'm like I don't know it literally.
Beatrice Levine:I will send you a video.
Nicole Kelly:Like it was like fluorescent tape on a mattress or something and I'm like what is this? But upstairs was this gorgeous Chloe exhibit with all of the like. Her talked about her Jewish background and like how they innovated fashion and it was beautiful. But yeah, clothing is fashion.
Beatrice Levine:And clothing is art Like. There's the Met, costume Institute, and what does everyone know?
Speaker 3:the Met, for I mean everyone in America, it's the Met Gala right which is their big fundraiser.
Beatrice Levine:So this conversation still happening today in their history world it just blows my mind.
Nicole Kelly:It's art you wear. What is that line from? Devil Wears Prada. It's art you lived your life in, or something I don't remember.
Beatrice Levine:He says devil rose prada, like it's something like art you lived your life in or something I don't remember.
Nicole Kelly:He's just like you know it's um, but he's just like something like it's better than art because you get to live your life in it. Yes, something like that.
Speaker 3:I love that movie yes, it's, I love stealing to jay with that movie yes, I we.
Nicole Kelly:I just watched side note. Have you seen that movie conspiracy, that hbo movie about the von c conference?
Beatrice Levine:only a thousand times!
Nicole Kelly:Colin Firth complaining about jews. That's what I I was like.
Beatrice Levine:Well I liked that movie. I would say, like, when people like give me, when people try to like be really, I've never gotten this, where people try to be like really tough and like give me, like your best holocaust movies, what should I watch? Right, that one, I would say, if you cannot handle, like the gore and the all of it, because, like, obviously you think the gray zone or like son of saul, which are like super graphic and super hard to watch. I'm like. Conspiracy on hbo is my number three because it is almost word for word what you see in, like the notes that were adapted quote-unquote notes, and it reads like a play, like it's fascinating.
Nicole Kelly:It does read like a play. My husband was like it's the play. I have an issue with the gray zone because I don't like primo levy and I don't like I will full-on. I feel like I'm gonna get like blacklisted because I know everyone's like oh, I don't like primo levy because this is getting like really in. We can have this conversation because you know this he was, was not at Birkenau.
Nicole Kelly:And a lot of the stuff he talks about with the Sauter Commando he did not witness personally and is from the testimony of that Hungarian doctor who also I found in undergrad. I found holes in his testimony and I'm like this is not possible, timing wise. So a lot of like Primo Levi got his stuff from that Hungarian doctor whose name I cannot pronounce, and then like, stole that. So I don stuff from that hungarian doctor whose name I cannot pronounce and then, like, stole that. So I don't like primo levy and for those of you that don't know who that is, he was um an italian holocaust survivor, wrote a lot of books and I feel like I don't know.
Beatrice Levine:I was having this conversation with my husband today about like testimony difficult and like I wonder if, like this conversation has been had about testimony or like or like, a kind of like we're talking about, like the primo levy's, like the anne franks of the world, of this world, like the people that kind of become like the poster child, like primo levy would be like the first person to tell you like the reason he survived the war is because he had a job indoors working inside.
Beatrice Levine:Yeah, he was at buna like that right and like, but that is not the conversation around him and that's never how he's presented.
Nicole Kelly:No, no, no, no, it's like I I feel like I'm gonna be the woman who's like talking trash about all these people. But like simon wiesenthal, they've proven that he was not in the camps he says he was in. Now I don't know if this is just him not remembering or whatever, and like no one's gonna argue with a holocaust survivor, but like testimony in general, there it's very problematic if it's not backed up with fact. So it's something that.
Nicole Kelly:I've become like really interested in and like the concept of memory and like trauma and all of that. But I feel like we're jumping ahead because I feel like the two of us are going to have like a seven hour conversation about the Holocaust. So you're working in the auction house and this leads you to certain artifacts coming through that you have said led to your interest in Holocaust research.
Beatrice Levine:Right. So it's always fascinating to me that, like I grew up in Germany, I grew up on a military installation Like my entire life wouldn't have existed if, like World War II didn't happen. Life wouldn't have existed if, like world war ii didn't happen. Like my school where I live, like none of that would have been you know happening, except you know, if the marshall plan didn't happen, right, yeah. And then I go on to do separately, to do this like art history thing in college and somehow never mend the worlds together, even though I knew very well about like things. I mean, that was, that was. Maybe that's the thing.
Beatrice Levine:Maybe it was just too normalized because, like every other day there's an article in a German newspaper about like somebody's grandpa died and there's a Van Gogh that's been missing for like 45 years, yeah, like in their basement. So maybe it was just too normalized for me. So what really ended up getting my attention at the auction house wasn't necessarily artwork coming through that had interesting provenance. What ended artwork coming through that had interesting provenance, what ended up getting my attention originally was like nazi memorabilia. Okay, what kind of stuff was coming through?
Beatrice Levine:so we acquired another auction house who shall remain nameless, and I, and I hate, I hate saying that because it's like you can google in three seconds what I'm talking about I mean, we'll let people doing you know do that on their own, the, the, auction house was working for if you remember the name and you've been paying attention acquired another auction house around the time I started working there and there they had a big like ammunitions department, so like antique guns which again I didn't know was a thing and like their number one selling lot, so that's what we call like an item for sale auction.
Beatrice Levine:Their number one selling lot they were like so proud of was a weapon that, uh, herman garing owned and I remember getting like a queasy feeling we have at the museum that I work at a accordion that belonged to goring um, I guess he gave it to someone because he was like I'm gonna kill myself.
Nicole Kelly:I'm gonna give my stuff away. I don't know I have a.
Beatrice Levine:I'm like do you know who Nancy Yide is? Have you ever heard that?
Nicole Kelly:name.
Beatrice Levine:She is like the number one provenance researcher on his collection, because he looted the most amount of art of like any of the boys of Berlin.
Nicole Kelly:Oh, yeah, for sure, and I and the daughter refused to give it back.
Beatrice Levine:She was like no, I'm not. Any of this still in our back. That's a whole other subject is like the children of these men. It's so fascinating. The ones who are like I am horrified. I'm going to give my entire life to making it right. And their sibling will be like F you. I'm the biggest neo-Nazi of all time.
Nicole Kelly:There's a documentary about Hans Frank's son and someone else's son and they're like friends and Hans Frank's son hated him because Hans Frank was a terrible person. We just watched one called the Commandant's son, about which which, like I said, this is my life, like I took a night off class and I was like I need a palate cleanser and we ended up watching a two hour Holocaust documentary.
Speaker 3:Um, but yeah, but like his sister was like, if it was so bad, why did people survive?
Nicole Kelly:And I'm like, oh, oh, my God, I wish we would set out that too. It was like, if it was so bad, why did people survive? And I'm like oh, oh, my god, okay I wish we don't set out.
Beatrice Levine:That too is like she's quoted, like the 70s being like I'm ashamed and like all this stuff so like something maybe she could have been lying, I don't know. Or was she lying back then, like who knows? Like so many questions, but anyway. So the number so they were selling. This auction house was selling guring's guns and I was like horrified by that and then they have another sale again.
Beatrice Levine:Now it's like under arning and like the middle part of the sale is all like sofa wear from burtish garden with like the eagle and like you know the swastika on it and I just remember, it's like really an easy feeling in my tummy and maybe like five or six years before my last year, my last year in germany, I had been on a strausenbahn where there was like a nazi salute, like show of power and my like almost 15 years living in germany that had never happened. Like neo-nazi got on the train, piled hitler and it was.
Nicole Kelly:It was like it was happening. You can get big trouble for that in germany too, like you'll get arrested like the doors shut.
Beatrice Levine:I'll never, never forget. Like the door shut, like he gets on, he does it. There's only like 30 seconds between stops. The minute we pull up at the next station, they're like nobody move, because the second that door opened they arrested him immediately.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah.
Beatrice Levine:And so that nothing like that had ever happened to me. Like name Levine and live there, they're ignorant, like that's not what it's like here, and I got, like the universe like smacked me in the face, like that's not true. So, having that experience, and then years later in Chicago, seeing this going on, it was like they all came together for me and I got very overwhelmed by it. So, you, I was seeing a lot of things like that, like just like, like memorabilia type stuff, and it wouldn't it's not illegal to sell those things at auction, but it is kind of unethical, right?
Nicole Kelly:So yeah, that's what I wanted to ask about your feelings about the ethics of these artifacts, because I've told you, and I don't know if I've mentioned this on my podcast before, my grandfather was in World War II and he fought in Europe and it was very common and a lot of the artifacts the museum I worked at were found this way Things like Himmler's cape and things like that. The American soldiers took stuff like it was just very common.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah. So my mom has a bunch of Nazi stuff at her house like a metal and ring and all this stuff and I don't know what to do with it and my husband and I discussed this like monthly because it'd be weird to display it, because that's weird it. I don't want to donate to a museum because I know it's never going to see the light of day.
Beatrice Levine:because those of you that don't know, when you donate something to a museum they're basically like it's never going to come out, like it's just going to be in our collection and especially like a holocaust museum or something like they typically try to avoid like a lot of displaying a lot of nazi memorabilia, because then it can become kind of like a site where, like people who are into that stuff can look at it. Like into the brown house in munich, since it's become a museum has like really struggled with that like how much of this stuff do we actually put on display?
Nicole Kelly:the museum in berlin on museum island has a lot of nazi memorabilia and but it's kind of like a cohesive history of germany tote in total and I think they did a really good job of that. But also showing like the ridiculousness of like here's a nazi christmas ornament and like weird stuff how many, especially if you're a museum?
Beatrice Levine:it's like how many like coins from the reich are you gonna?
Speaker 3:pound this way. How many medals are you gonna pound this way? I?
Beatrice Levine:mean I. There is a book out there about nazi kitsch. Apparently hitler really hated kitschy items, so a lot of those things that are like the nazi he was an artist. He was an artist yes, and he had a very specific kind of old school like yeah, taste and so he like the nazi ornament, or like the nazi like playing card deck, like actually those things are actually all unauthorized which is even more sickening like they're things that people just like made on their own. How crazy is that? A lot of the time.
Nicole Kelly:You know, our big joke is I want to know who the flag manufacturer was for the nazis, because they used a lot of flags, um, and I'm assuming some of them were not like authorized, like somebody was making a lot of money off of nazi flags I want to know who that was.
Beatrice Levine:I know there's a class you can take on like corporate collaboration that I want to take because I'm super interested in that um, I like that you're so, um, you're so like um present when it comes to like these objects you have and like how to I don't know what to do with them and like I don't know like it's right because, like my advice most of the time is like oh, donate to a museum because then they can use it for research, right, but if you don't want to do that, there are smaller organizations like I know we have, like the midwest center for holocaust education out here in kansas city.
Beatrice Levine:It's run by shelly klein. Like donating to a smaller organization you could, you would be better able to keep tabs on like what their plans are for the objects and how they're going to use them, if that makes sense because you're right once you submit them to a museum and they accept them, it just goes down this black hole and you'll never hear about them again yeah, that's something small.
Nicole Kelly:I took a small I took a class on aids memorialization and we went to a lecture um with an organization called visual aids, um, about which they basically in the 80s, when a bunch of artists were dying in the village, they were just throwing their artwork out, so people who knew they were sick started donating their works, and one of the guys who um worked, used to work for visual aids and now works at um with a collection at nyu was like the problem is is when you give your work away, it's no longer your work, and it's the same thing with memorabilia it it no longer belongs to you and what it does is out of your control and it, I don't know, it's just such a weird like gray area and I yeah, and I like my suggestion for you would be to donate it to like a smaller Holocaust organization.
Beatrice Levine:Just because you can have you are one able to even have that conversation with somebody there, yeah, and two, you'll have easier access to them in terms of, like wanting to know what's going on with the material you donated, how are they using it, things like that, like a smaller organization, like the midwest center for whole cost education, is going to be much more open to that kind of donation and that kind of like almost like an open adoption I can go, I can go and visit um right, whereas if you donated to like the ushm, like yeah see, it would just like go into their archive.
Nicole Kelly:The problem is a lot of those exhibitions are there for years and then it takes years to design a new exhibit and they have.
Beatrice Levine:Like the Museum of New York is a third of the size of USHMM and they're like we have tens of thousands of artifacts just sitting in boxes and we don't even have people people you know the ability to process a lot of this the number one thing I would say to not do which I've seen a lot and actually spent a lot of my money like working with this is do not donate it to like an antique mall. So a lot of times people will just want it out of their house so badly and just like I don't know what this is. Get it away from me. You can go into like any antique mall in america and like in the coin section there's literally a third right coin section because so many people clearly have coins from like their like you said, like their grandfather or whoever, and they just want to add their house because obviously they have huge swastikas stamped on them.
Beatrice Levine:Yeah, I have spent so much of my money buying coins or jewelry. So like one time I found like a pendant with like somebody's like nazi, I don't know son or boyfriend or whoever his photo inside had a big old swastika on it. Like clearly people just want this out of their house. Yeah, they go to places like auction houses that have a backbone or whoever, and those people say they don't help them, they just turn them away which is also not how they should like handle that at all, and so they feel like they're backed out of corner.
Nicole Kelly:So they just donate it to like an antique mall, because the antique mall will take it do not do that, because that could also, then it could fall into the hands of, like you know, the neighbor from american beauty if that's the concern, because I know there's two copies of mein kampf that belong to himmler at the museum and they were sent by two different anonymous donors and they were very specific about the uses for it, like that they couldn't use it to make money and that they had to display and it's like it's notated by himler's father. He was like taking notes, like, oh, this is very interesting, like they like no, you, you have to come to new york to see this specific artifact.
Nicole Kelly:I'm like I gotta see that yeah because it's two, the two copies, and his father had like notated it and they had written notes back and forth to each other. But they were anonymous donations and the person who donated was like you can't use this to make money and you can't sell it yeah, because there is a big underground world like I don't know.
Beatrice Levine:If this ever happens to you when you're doing your research, I'll be like bopping along and then all of a sudden I'm like, oh my god, I'm on a neo-nazi website.
Nicole Kelly:Um, my god, I was trying to look for the because there's a copy of the poison mushroom at the museum and I was like, oh, I want to read it. And then it was. This guy dedicated the book to the memory of julia striker. Um, and he had not only um. You can google that if you don't know who that is, friends um he, he was a real. He was a real anti-semite.
Nicole Kelly:Um it's you gotta be really anti-semite to be executed for publishing books and newspapers um, but somebody had not only done that, but they had created like fan fiction for each page, like if this is the first thing that comes up when you google it. I'm not even kidding. It's clearly like this guy is like a neo-nazi and had like taken these pictures and then created like a story for each picture and it was like multiple paragraphs. So yes, there's a huge neo-Nazi presence on the Internet.
Beatrice Levine:And so like, especially with like memorabilia and stuff, there's huge neo-Nazi websites that kind of disguise themselves as like historical memorabilia websites that are clearly run by neo-Nazis for neo-Nazis, and your item could easily end up on one of those pages.
Beatrice Levine:so like for example, I got all my you'll love this pickle. Like of my own free will, I fell down the rabbit hole of like the artist cosper david friedrich and the nazis, because all you hear about friedrich in art history is like, oh yeah, like nazis, nazis, nazis. And like the man was not a nazi. He wasn't even alive to see that he did not hold nationalist ideas. Like he held nationalist ideas about germany that did not, that were nationalist at the time he was alive, did not align with, like what nationalism meant during the rise of, like, you know, the nazi party.
Beatrice Levine:But people just conflate those two things together like he was a nationalist like he would have loved you know what was going on?
Nicole Kelly:it's, I think it's like the wagner thing, like yeah, not, uh, not all. What did I say?
Beatrice Levine:I say um, not all wagner lovers are nazis, but all nazis were wagner lovers yes, and so like cosper david friedrich, like wasn't even alive for any of this stuff but his art all you hear about all the time in our history is how his art got appropriated by the nazis, and I, by myself one day, had nothing to do with class nada. Like fell down this, like rabbit hole, like okay, but where?
Beatrice Levine:is this cosmo david friedrich, nazi propaganda that is always talked about our history, but like I've never actually seen any of it, like you know, a little bit like it's very like the connection, the visual connections to like his work and like with the nazi visual propaganda.
Beatrice Levine:It's very like vague, like yeah, it could be a cosmo-degrafridic or it could be like a painting of jesus, like you know, like they all have like same visual language, and so I fell down to rabbit hole and then I found it was like a photocopy of like a cosmo-degrafridic painting of a ship inside this like book and these books were made for like um, like nazi, like like a low level, like ss men or whatever when they joined, and it was like made by like the post, like the postal service in germany.
Beatrice Levine:It was very weird and it would have like things that the fuhrer likes. Like you know, you're now like a full-on like nazi party member, you're in that ss, like here's like a little book on, like now that you're like one of hitler's guys, like the art you should be liking, and there was one on friedrich and that was the first time I actually ever seen like a direct connection and I was so excited and I clicked on the image and like this is incredible, like I've never even heard of this book, like this type of like, almost like, um, like a cliff notes or something for like how to be a nazi right, like here's the art you should like, here's your arts note, here's your art book on like cliff notes of like things that the Nazi man likes.
Beatrice Levine:And then I was like, holy crap, I'm auctioning on a website where you can buy this, because some neo-Nazi is selling it.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, it's crazy what you can buy online. And I was like, oh my God, yeah, it's insane, the things you can buy online. Yes, that makes me so uncomfortable.
Beatrice Levine:I feel like.
Nicole Kelly:I want to win the lottery and just start buying all this stuff, and so it can't end up in the hands of these insane people. I know, which is a very Nicole thing to do if I win the lottery.
Beatrice Levine:That's a long way of saying what got my attention. First the auction house was memorabilia, and then I started like seeing art come through and like, when you looked for like provenance research wasn't being done period, like no one was going into make sure that, like, the person who had the title for this painting actually owned it, like that it actually should be with them, like there wouldn't be any issues, if that makes sense, right that's interesting because I know there's been a lot of historically like lawsuits about that and stolen art is that's why the mona lisa is famous because it was stolen like it was stolen, and so I noticed that that wasn't happening.
Beatrice Levine:And then when we would get something like, uh, say, like a degas and they want to authenticate it, they would always warn the client like, hey, if we spend like all this money insuring it and sending it like, so some, every artist almost has like different rules like how to authenticate, and he just happened to be one where you could send it back to france to like his like institution and they would authenticate it for you. And when they would tell clients like hey, there's a like a potential that you might actually own this right, that maybe it was stolen or whatever and it you know you might actually not even be able to sell this or we're gonna like there'll be like a lot of legal issues might split the sale. Whatever people on mac would be like I don't want to do that I understand that.
Beatrice Levine:Well then, why don't we bring it to? But then our solution would be like oh well, then let's just not do it, let's just say it's a day, God, because our and it's authentically a day God because our like buyer's contract basically covers us and says if you find out like if you decide to do the legwork yourself and you find out, this is not a day god like you'll get a hundred percent refund that's so unethical yeah, so I found out hardcore.
Beatrice Levine:That was my first exposure to like wow, the greed is more than you could even imagine. Like, think of, like the greatest decision you can make, and actually times it by a thousand, and that's the decision they're gonna make I thankfully do not have enough money to buy that kind of art, so I don't have to worry about that sort of thing. Me either. Thank.
Nicole Kelly:God. Okay. So you're working in these auction houses and you decide you're going to pursue an undergraduate certificate at the University of Kansas. What was that program and what was that like?
Beatrice Levine:So this is like even more interesting. I it was during COVID times, and what was that like? So this is like even more interesting. I it was during COVID times and I was like trying to figure out what I wanted to do with my life. I was out of auctions at that point. I was working at RH if anyone knows, the mall store that now is a design firm um, great, great brunch. Now they're also like mini restaurants, and so that was like my COVID job, trying to figure out what I was going to do.
Beatrice Levine:And and I found in like my off time. I was just spending hours watching lectures from the USHMM, watching documentaries, doing my own independent research on what's called like Nazi-era Providence. So like what happened, what I was witnessing basically at the auction house, and whether it stemmed from like years of guilt of sitting there and not saying anything, like watching it and being like the annoying one asking the question and being low enough on the staff to be like shut up right, stop talking, stop asking questions, like I didn't know what to do with all that information or what I had witnessed and I was just like okay, if I'm doing this by myself again, kind of like the very street thing in my own free time. This is probably what I should be pursuing Right, and I just happened to randomly google, start looking at programs and KU had an undergraduate certificate in holocaust and genocide studies they had. It was brand new. They had never offered it like before.
Beatrice Levine:Like when I applied and when it was accepted it was like the second year like I was the second year of doing it and you basically took a year of undergraduate classes, so like, yeah, I guess like 12 credits, like it wasn't long, you know, like two classes a semester and they were all undergraduate classes that the jewish uh studies department or history department already offered, right, so these classes were already available to ku students. What's even crazier is the year I took it, the university decided to get rid of the program oh, so it'll like break for two years yes, because of, like, a lack of enrollment, which is crazy because they never advertised it.
Beatrice Levine:Like I found out about it by googling it and the university's justification was like, well, our students aren't interested in it. Like, of course, an undergraduate student is not interested in undergraduate certificate, and so it didn't. That's very telling. They only offered it for two years. It cost the university no money to offer it, they only netted money. Right, you paid like three grand to do it. They only netted three grand. It wasn't like they had like special courses for it or it took extra time. They only made money from it. They never advertised it yet somehow said, because of a lack of enrollment, they were going to drop it. And this was all, by the way, pre-10-7.
Nicole Kelly:I feel like, though, I have heard that Jewish studies departments are wrought with anti-Semitism and apologists about things, so it's possible that there was more going on than just lack of enrollment.
Beatrice Levine:Well, I never got the vibe from KU Jewish studies that that was what was happening with them, but my experience with KU much later in graduate school I could see now, maybe, like the Goliath, they were up against when it came to anti-Semitism. It's a problem, that's all I'm going to say with that. So, like when they were told this was going to be cut, the idea of even putting up a fight was probably not the best move for them.
Nicole Kelly:And then you got your master's from KU. Yes, no. Okay, yeah. So I'm moving ahead. Yes, cause there's. I looked on your LinkedIn and I was like there's a lot of schools, so walk me through this journey. I know I've done the same thing. I've got like three on there now, so you've cut it down, I know, just got the three. Um, okay, so so you do this undergraduate certificate, and then what?
Beatrice Levine:And I was a manager at the Spencer museum of art, which was like the on-campus fine art museum, and it was awesome. Love Sarah Lynn Reese Hardy, love that museum. And I decided I wanted to pursue my master's degree in art history and I wanted my research focus to be Nazi-era provenance research and my goal which was my goal then and is still my goal was become like an art historian with an expertise in this sort of like niche area because I felt like it should be part of our foundational art historical training. Like you should not be going into the world as an art historian with a bachelor's degree in art history not knowing anything about provenance or provenance research or the issues because it's not just the holocaust right like I would be. That would be my specific like area of expertise. But there are tons of wars and tons of different like conflicts across time and history that items have been stolen.
Beatrice Levine:You know, very famously the elgin marbles is like the one. That's like the one exposure to provenance you get is in your history degrees. You write a paper like first semester, talking about arguing either side of the elgin marvels debate, which is, you know, should the elgin marvels remain at the british museum or should they go back home to athens. And I mean literally to the point where it's like pick a side. You don't even have to believe in what side you're arguing, just write the paper and that is like the only provenance anything you get exposed to, like all four years you're doing the degree. So I was like I want to become a provenance research expert focusing on Nazi era looted art and I want to bring it back to the university so it becomes like foundational curriculum. Right, even if they just learn about Nazi era provenance research, at least they're learning about provenance research in general in some capacity.
Beatrice Levine:And so I started at the University of Kansas getting my master's of art history. I did my coursework and then I started doing my graduate level seminars it was a teaching assistant at the same time for them and I just noticed a lot of resistance. You know, I felt like I was the tax man in the department. Like I remember the first day when someone asked me you know, another TA asked me like what my research focus was, and I told them they said, oh, we're still doing that, so like there was an attitude in the field that, like my research was like or my interest was irrelevant.
Beatrice Levine:And then, whenever I would try to incorporate it into term papers because again I realized very quickly there wasn't actually a lot of coursework or seminar work, that to support it, right like there wasn't anything, even like world war ii, you know anything. And if I wanted to take a elective, I was allowed to take a certain number of electives. If I wanted to do a graduate level elective, even through, like military sciences or history at ku, I was like actively discouraged to say no, keep it within the department. If I wanted to incorporate my research interest in, say, a term paper, I was told no, you need to spread your wings, don't be so focused on this one thing.
Beatrice Levine:And I realized that was not happening to anybody else and I thought oh, this is really odd, like I remember I did a presentation my first semester and I was in an impressionism course with a professor where I had taken an impressionism course before, because I did two years at KU as an undergrad and I picked a Renoir and the little girl in the painting who was in this Renoir portrait. Almost all of her family died in Auschwitz and they had a very interesting history of like. Most of them were converted Catholics. So they were Jewish and they converted to Catholicism like 30 years prior and they still were arrested, still went to the transit camp and still died and I brought that up in the presentation. I also brought up, like, the dreyfus affair, because I noticed our professor wasn't bringing it up and I thought that was really odd because the dreyfus affair was basically the reason the impressionist broke up like oh, I didn't know, that was like.
Beatrice Levine:Yeah, it was like the yoko, oh no, oh, of the of the impressionist, because the impressionists were like a group of like, kind of like punk artists it's just because we're so hard to say, because they're so popular now but they were kind of like outsiders and they were doing this weird thing and basically people who were anti-semitic and non-anti-semitic. There was a huge rift between the two and that kind of like broke everybody up and so I just thought it was so odd. This class and I like had originally gone to the professor to say I want to write about illustrations uh, anti-semitic illustrations of Alfred Dreyfus during his trial in France, and she was like no, absolutely not, like you're not doing that paper. So then she suggested this Renoir painting.
Beatrice Levine:So I do the Renoir and I find this very interesting Holocaust history that's not being covered in the class nor is the Dreyfus affair and I remember after we did, after we kind of had our debrief after that presentation, she said like I just don't want you to think like that has to like all rest on your shoulders and you know you're responsible for doing like this Holocaust education. And I was like I just felt like it was really important because this class was taken by me and like two other grad students but the rest of the class was undergraduates and I just felt like it was really important for them to know this.
Beatrice Levine:I was going to speak to a room of like 70 undergraduates. I can't ignore that history, and so that sort of continued on and on and on, and so that's when I decided maybe I should start looking somewhere else to pursue my research. Is that what led you to grads or what happened next? So when I was there, it's like interesting, because I was there and they weren't really interested in my research and they were kind of like pushing me to do something else. But I ended up getting into this program. That was just one week at the University of Denver. Yeah, I saw that they have something called ACE, so it's like their Center for Art Collection Ethics, and they have an incredible, amazing art historian there and provenance researcher named elizabeth campbell.
Beatrice Levine:So like, if you're like new to this area of art history or you're interested, read everything elizabeth campbell has ever written and on top of that it's always just nice to know when you're like in academia, in these spaces, she's also the nicest person alive. It's also nice to read the research, knowing that too. But she of like of her own chutzpah, for lack of a better term, started this summer program because if you wanted to do any kind of like provenance training in the united states it was like near impossible. You'd have to go to italy or, like you know, france, like there are all these like broad programs that are really expensive and like it's not really accessible to us here. So she started her own one-week program. She selected 20 applicants from all over the country.
Beatrice Levine:Couldn't believe I got into this like at all. Like I felt like a total ding dong when I showed up there and it was all different, uh, mas, phds, and actually the first year, not that's out there but it was all women, all of the entire, all the applicants in the all the country. It was all women were selected. So it was incredible and we basically did a week of like hard I'd say we did a college semester in a week.
Beatrice Levine:We did a week of like hardcore provenance research from with different provenance researchers one, uh, from the nelson, atkinson, kansas city, who's amazing named mackenzie mallon, another one who was local to the denver area, and like by the end of the week they essentially gave us an object that they had done. Provenance research on that was available on the website of the institutions where they worked and said like, basically, like, work backwards, go like, redo it, make sure that we like didn't miss anything. And people found holes. And it was incredible like people found new information that was they were able to add to the website. And so then that was where I got my like we call it my professional certification in provenance research and I I did one more semester at KU after that and then I was like I got to.
Beatrice Levine:I got to figure out something else because I was able to see that these people, these like minded people, were out there. I just need to find them.
Nicole Kelly:And then what happened?
Beatrice Levine:And so I was like looking for another place to go. I'm googling around and I'm thinking like maybe umkc, like maybe history, maybe it's more history, I don't know and I found grads college online, which I think you'll find so interesting, nicole's like. I think I found grads like two years ago when I was doing my undergraduate certificate, because I thought I had a moment of like, is it actually this? Is it actually holocaust and genocide studies and not our history? And I found grads and I found the MA and PhD, but I think there was just something about it at the time being a remote program that I was like, oh, I can't do that. No, no way. Like I have to be in person. Right, like I'm not an online student and I completely dismissed it.
Beatrice Levine:So it's totally like right place, right time. I'm like desperate. I've like left my program. I'm like not a TA anymore. I'm like, oh, my god, what am I gonna do? And I it like appeared in front of me again in some google search and I remember looking at my partner at the time and saying to him like, oh, this is it. Like I'm gonna apply to this and I'm gonna get in and like this is this, is the road I'm going down, and so I had a meeting with Mindy from Gratz, who's the best.
Nicole Kelly:Yes, we love Mindy.
Beatrice Levine:Yes, and she essentially said to me you know you've already done half a MA at KU. Yeah, like, why don't we slow down, why don't we have you finish your MA at KU and then you apply to Gratz for the PhD? And I told her just a little bit of what I was experiencing behind the scenes with the faculty and staff, especially about things like Shabbat observance and sort of some of the feedback I was getting, which a lot of which you'll love this, and a lot of the feedback I was getting was, you know, they would say something horribly anti-semitic or just really wrong, just like, oh my gosh, like this is like third rail stuff, like what's going on, and they would follow it up with. I mean, I get it, I'm jewish too that's what I was saying.
Nicole Kelly:The anti-semitism in the jewish studies departments, it's a problem. It was.
Beatrice Levine:That was like the first time I really dealt with that. I was like, uh, what's happening right now? Like I had a professor that I worked for she was very upset about my shivalrous servants and she would make she would make it incredibly difficult for me to like get to temple. So like she would always like throw these like last minute meetings that we all had to be there on Friday. They would start like at one o'clock and there would be no. We'd have no idea when they would end. So like, even if they ended at like three or four, it's like I have two dogs and then I can't leave my. I've been away from my dogs all day because she my office hours are before this meeting.
Beatrice Levine:So I that means I'd have to go home and stay with my dogs. I couldn't go get in the car now and drive 45 minutes to Topeka, be at Temple for like an hour and a half and drive back Right. And she then said to me uh, in a meeting we had, um, you know, I really feel like this, like all of a sudden, your Shabbat observant out of nowhere, like I know, when you worked at the museum you worked Saturdays, which, again, I had never told her that information. So that means she was probably asking around or somebody had said that to her. And I said to her you're right, I did work Saturdays because I was in the middle of like what technically was called a conversion process and I hadn't, you know, got through my mikvah ceremony. And I mean like the silence after that, because I think this woman who was screaming at me like I'm Jewish too, didn't even know what I meant by that or what a mikvah was right or why I would say that.
Beatrice Levine:So I was dealing with a lot of that on the side as well and when I finally told Mindy that Mindy was like just kidding, we'll get you in as soon as possible and like just send us your stuff and if you apply and like you know you get in, we're going to basically like fast track it, like we'll start you as soon as we can. And that's exactly what happened.
Nicole Kelly:And it's the best decision I've ever made in my life for sure. Did they transfer over your credits from?
Beatrice Levine:ku nope, oh no so I started fresh but here's the thing I mean I said this earlier today. One thing I learned in my 20s is if something really isn't a fit for you like it's okay to quit. Yeah, especially in a toxic atmosphere like that. That's well yeah and like just let it go because the credits aren't worth it. They're not because, guess what? I've made up the amount of credits I did at ku. I've made up in the year of denigrats I mean, it goes so quick.
Nicole Kelly:It's kind of insane. I feel like I not, and there's so much reading. I feel like last week there was I've read like 300 pages and I'm like I oh yeah, it's the book of the week club. Yeah, I have to take like a break, like I'll stop and do like a little what's on my face, um, I'll do like office work, um, yeah, and then I'll be like, oh, this video and my brain goes like a million places. But I feel like if I sit and I just read it, it's a lot. And when you're reading 300 pages about like children in concentration camps, it can be a lot. But it goes so quick. These eight week I don't know what you call them like mini masters.
Beatrice Levine:Like accelerated, it's an accelerated program. And that was one of my biggest things was so many people were like, oh my God, you're gonna lose all those credits. I'm like you guys, I will have made up in two what would be like two traditional semesters at grads. Like it's crazy.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, it goes really quick and I feel like I've learned a lot and I went into it being like all, like I know a lot already and every day I'm like, oh, this is insane, it's just there's so much information. What have been your favorite classes so far?
Beatrice Levine:Oh my gosh. You know I have definitely gone down like the antisemitism studies track and so I've been really enjoying the antisemitism studies classes I've taken with Eyal Eyal Feinberg is my advisor. I had one that was like I think it was my first semester. It was like antisemitism in like the United States and just focusing on like. Obviously we'll talk about this, but obviously I'm very active on social media. Anti-semitism in like the united states and just focusing on like, because I obviously will talk about this, but obviously I'm very active on social media.
Beatrice Levine:Yes, so I've really been interested in like holocaust denial and like anti-semitic memes, like based in like holocaust denialism on social media, things like that.
Nicole Kelly:And then I'm trying now did they talk about holocaust inversion, which is my favorite in the class. Yes, I know about how like people will turn no, no in the holocaust in america they'll be like they don't turn.
Beatrice Levine:You know the whole calling jews nazi things and that's my favorite that is my favorite um, you know, what's crazy is that was actually covered when I did my holocaust and genocide studies certificate. I had to take israel and the palestinian conflict and that was covered in that course and I remember that was in 2022. And I remember the students having such a hard time grasping that concept.
Nicole Kelly:Well. Well it happens, it happens.
Beatrice Levine:It happens all the time. I'm sure they're the number one participants now.
Nicole Kelly:Yes, it's true, it's true. So you like, you've been like your anti-Semitism studies classes, that's good. I feel like I've been doubling down on like I'm taking. We're obviously taking children in the Nazi era now and I'm taking modern Eastern European Jewish history and teaching the Holocaust over the summer. Oh my God, how cool I am. I'm going to take, take a palate cleanser and learn about pre-Holocaust Jew hatred.
Nicole Kelly:Yeah, and take take a palate cleanser and learn about pre-holocaust jew hatred um and pogroms we'll just you know, which would be interesting for me because that's where my family comes from and I was looking at some of the required texts today and it's like the shalom um stories about tevye and I'm like I would love to read this instead of reading about treblinka. So it'll be a nice palate palate cleanser, which is weird to say.
Beatrice Levine:Oh, and I will say, like, in terms of like Holocaust classes I just did last semester Holocaust in the Catholic Church and as somebody who, like, lived in Italy for like six months studying abroad and like thought they were going to be an Italian, like specialist, when I was an undergrad Fascinating course. It's like everyone knows about, like the rat lines and like the catholic church, but like getting into, like the morality and the ethics around, like what did they say? Enough, did they do enough? What more could they have done?
Nicole Kelly:could they have. Could they have done? More like that is that whole debate is like I was just reading about that, but it was more about the liberation aspect and the children who had been baptized and the pop being yeah, there, if you haven't gotten there, it's, uh, it's uh, what's her name?
Nicole Kelly:Um, I don't know, I don't remember the the author's name. There's so many authors, um, but talking about how children who had been baptized by their Catholic rescuers, like all these Jewish organizations, were like, hey, and there it was a whole thing. Um, but I'd love, I think it's fascinating how the Catholic church dealt with all that, so I'm sure I'll make that class at some point. Yeah.
Nicole Kelly:So what does this look like for you when you're done with your degree? What are you hoping to do with this new information you've gotten with your MA PhD program?
Beatrice Levine:I mean I would love to like.
Beatrice Levine:I mean our history is like my original core love.
Beatrice Levine:Like I'd love to take all of this knowledge I have now and bring it back to that field because we clearly have so much. We clearly have so many issues when it comes to like Nazi Arab Provenance research, seeing it as valid, like seeing like these Jewish concerns as like something that is valid and still worthy of research and also something that like and like the legal aspect of it is really sad, like there really are no international laws, like non-binding international agreements and things like that and so like bringing this knowledge to like undergraduate level art historian so that they're better prepared when they get into the field, when they have to handle if they have to handle these objects. Because, like I said, it wasn't happening at all in the auction house where I worked, I think the register at the museum where I worked had been to like a provenance training once. Like in the past, like 10, 15 years. Like trying to bring it back to like my original love, you know, the arts and making it a priority so what does that look like?
Nicole Kelly:is that teaching? Is that consulting? Is that heading an auction house or a museum? And in my ideal, world.
Beatrice Levine:It's teaching, which I know people hearing this might be like oh my god, you had that experience with academia, why would you want to go back? But I always say, like my dad one time said to me oh my gosh, I'm so sorry you had that experience and I said I'm not as awful as it was, it makes me a better teacher. Yeah, so teaching is like the ultimate goal. I'd love to teach. I would love to teach like at the university, undergraduate level, whether it's a course or what, several courses, but like that's what I want to do.
Nicole Kelly:I feel like teaching was not the original goal when I decided to go back, when I decided to go back and finish my BFA, but I had some really great teachers, especially online, who did a really good job of talking about their personal experiences and connecting with people. So maybe teaching I don't know. I have no idea what I'm gonna end up doing. I ideally actually ideally what I'm going to be doing is taking people over to poland and being a tour guide in poland. Um, I can see that for you and we are. I don't know if we're gonna officially announce this, but I'm planning a trip for next august, um, and I'm probably going to be looking to partner with people for this. So I will absolutely be reaching out to you about this and maybe I can.
Beatrice Levine:Museums yes, there's all kinds of sites I mean, like their castle in Warsaw is like destroyed. Yes, yeah, yeah, yeah, I haven't been to Warsaw.
Nicole Kelly:So I feel like I have to go over and do some research myself. But I'm thinking next August I'm going to be taking like a beta group of like some people over to Poland, so we'll see how that works out so so. So now let's pivot to social media. Uh, every millennials favorite subject. Uh, you are very popular on Tik TOK and Instagram. I'm, you are. Cause I was like.
Nicole Kelly:I was like oh, I like this person in class, let me look her up. And then I was like like, oh, you have 35,000 Instagram followers. Like uh, that's just another reason why I was really nervous to ask you to be on the show, because I was like, oh, she's fancy too. Um, so how did that? You are fancy. I have like 780 followers. Um, I'm like, it's like people I know personally. Um, so what made you decide to start a social media account that was less personal and more about our history and things like that?
Beatrice Levine:I love this question because I have Culture Quota, which is my art history based account, and then I do have a personal account and it is called Not Culture Quota Very literal, very literal. Very straightforward. Well, I love literal writing. You know, that.
Nicole Kelly:So yes, but my focus is Culture, quota, it wasn't always Culture very literal, very literal, very straightforward. Well, I love literal writing, you know that.
Beatrice Levine:So yes, but my focus is culture quota. It wasn't always culture quota. So essentially years ago, when I was studying abroad in rome, which I mentioned like kind of in passing earlier, I ended up getting this amazing, randomly assigned roommate.
Beatrice Levine:It's like I always say, you know, god is real and she's a woman and this is proof we become best friends. Like I end up being the maid of honor at her wedding, like she's my business partner, and she got like a de facto tour guide. When we ended up being roommates because I was like totally fine going to all these places where we didn't speak the language, walking around and like giving her just kind of like these, like personalized tours. And we go to paris, we're standing in front of notre Dame, and she's like why do you care about this? Like all these books and movies, and I'm just looking at this building, it's like basically a bunch of stones, yeah, and I lost my mind on her.
Beatrice Levine:I was like how dare you and I get rid of the whole this took 300 years to build and they did the whole thing, and so we're sitting in the park behind Notre Dame very famously in my world. It's because it has wi-fi, I know. If you want to get wi-fi anywhere in Europe, I'll tell you where oh, I might need you.
Beatrice Levine:You might need to create some sort of handbook for me yes, because, like, I know all the spots and so we're sitting back there and she was a marketing major at Butler much more business-minded numbers don't get make her sweat like they do for me and she just kind of looks at me. She's like there's something here, like there's a business, like I don't know. There's just something like we need to really hone in on, like your history, knowledge and how, like you make you can tell it to people without making people feel dumb. And I'm like, oh, I'm just like in my mind, I'm just telling you like I was talking. She's like, yeah, it's just something about it, like I never feel like intimidated to ask you questions or like whatever, or like that you're talking down to me in any way. And so she encouraged me to make an instagram.
Beatrice Levine:This was like in 2016. We actually even have a photo of like us in the library at our school in rome. We decide, like the name is going to be culture quota and this is what we're going to do on instagram. A hook, so cute. I have a cute little banana republic trench coat on, like kicking my leg up. No idea.
Beatrice Levine:This is gonna become like the rest of my life, and at the time, it was literally like a photo of, like a piece of art or even like a famous, like piece of clothing or like building. And I would just give you like the little bite to like the culture, cultural quota right, your quota for the week, your little bite that like you could then go on like to your dinner party and then like make people feel like maybe you were more cultured right than you were or like you know, to keep up, because that was obviously also playing on the idea of like our history degrees, like are just MRS degrees, like degrees, get to that people get to like be impressive, like at dinner parties right and it, just as Instagram evolved, as social media evolved, culture quota evolved with it.
Beatrice Levine:So like I was never sticking to that one format, so like once the thing to do on instagram wasn't a photo with like a ton of text. I just evolved with it. I made the tiktok during covid. Like everybody else, I was stuck inside my apartment, had nothing to do made the tiktok during covid and the tiktok actually took off first.
Beatrice Levine:So culture quota had like a couple thousand followers on instagram and then I got like tens of thousands of followers on tiktok almost overnight. And then in this past year once I transitioned culture quota to being more like I hate to say, like a meme page, in a way like meme style or, like you know, presenting like the same ideas I always had and the same jokes and the same observations, but in more of like a meme style language. Then it took off. So culture quota having like the four I think it's like 46 000 followers now that this time last year was probably at like 11 000 you need, I need to pick your brain so like one thing I do is like I never I don't hide the fact that like I'm an art historian and like this is my research and this is what I do.
Beatrice Levine:It's like it's literally at the top of my posted posts or like podcasts, just like this, where I talk about who I am and what I do, but I don't make content about the Holocaust typically and I don't make content about like provenance research.
Beatrice Levine:I might make like an informative post every now and then about it and I have done um like a meme style post for the leo back institute. It was actually so funny. The girl who runs the social media there is so cool and she was like we really want something about um provenance research of like books that have been looted. And I said, okay, just like we want it to be funny and we want it to be like, if you can, real housewives themed and I was like easily just to get people interested and that worked. Like you know, it's not like it wasn't done in like a mocking way, it was more mocking. It was more mocking. It wasn't done in a mocking way. Actually, who we were mocking? What I mean was we handled it, or I handled it in a way where I was more mocking.
Beatrice Levine:The people who have the institutions, who have these books in their possession and refuse to give them up, or you know, you present them with evidence that they don't own the book and they are like what, who never heard of you like that kind of thing. So that's really the only time it's come up for me. I have had people ask me on both sides of the conflict why don't you post about it more, or why don't we talk about it more? Especially as a jewish creator and the stance I've always taken is you can get that almost anywhere on instagram I would like to be a safe space where we can all come and laugh and just relax a little bit, no matter like where you fall on either side, but especially for my jewish community, like I, would just like to be a place where we can just laugh a little bit and, you know, have some great jokes about Shabbat and Passover and chill out for a second Cause, like you said, it is nonstop time for seven, all the time.
Nicole Kelly:Yes, especially if you're a Jewish person online. Yes, it's, it's all the time, but safe spaces are good spaces. So you said. You said your former roommates are business partner. Is that, with glamor and honey, your?
Beatrice Levine:former roommates or business partner is that with glamour and honey correct? Can you talk to me about that? Yes, so when we started culture quota, we started glamour and honey alongside of it, and our idea originally was to make like merchandise for girls who were in sororities because she hated all of her um, delta gamma gear right.
Beatrice Levine:So we wanted to make something that was like aesthetic and not so, like you know, didn't necessarily have like a giant greek letters on it, because obviously those are trademarked and they're trademarked yes, so like the actual, like logos and stuff, like you have to pay money. So weird, is that crazy?
Beatrice Levine:I didn't go to a real college, so I didn't deal with any of that I was not a sorority and I also I went to lula, which also their sororities were like for show. Like you know, it was like you just had the title, like that was not like going to like ku or something, but so that was the original idea around glamour and honey. And then, once culture quota got big enough that it needed merch and merch was being like, asked for. It just ended up being the hosting site for my merch, so that's where you can get all of like cultural quotas. Our history. Merch is on glamor and honeycom and so she runs that with me. She is like my business advisor when it comes to like Instagram deals and things like that. Like she's, she's the best. I hope everyone gets an Allison woods in their life. I really do.
Nicole Kelly:It's nice that you found someone in such a random way. Like you said, god is real oh no, she's the definition of like.
Beatrice Levine:we all have soulmates in life, and they are not necessarily like your romantic partner.
Nicole Kelly:I completely agree with that. I have several of those, I think. So you mentioned Real Housewives. You are a big reality TV fan. I've been really bad because I have no time whatsoever at all to do anything. As I said, in my free time. I was really. I've been really bad cause I have no time whatsoever, um at all to do anything. As I said, in my free time, I watched Holocaust documentaries, um, but we were really into below deck during um, covid and uh, I, I, I am like two seasons behind in on Salt Lake, but um, I, I enjoy a good reality TV show, oh yeah, on occasion. What is your favorite?
Beatrice Levine:Ooh, it's so hard for me Because I love reality TV. I always say the smartest people I know love reality TV too. Okay, I definitely am like a Real Housewives girl, for sure, and this could be like divisive. I love Real Housewives of new york city.
Nicole Kelly:Oh, there's a new cast right now, isn't there correct?
Beatrice Levine:and I was about to say I'm gonna. You know, caveat that with. I love the original real housewives of new york seasons not that I dislike the new seasons.
Beatrice Levine:I'm not saying I dislike them, I just there hasn't been enough of them for me to be like, oh yeah, like they're my faves, like the original with like bethany and luann ramona, like that's probably my fave, like that's what it turned on, like my dog lady. Her middle name is dorinda, after dorinda medley from the real house. I was, you know, lady dorinda levine, so that's probably my fave um, all right.
Nicole Kelly:uh, so this last portion of the interview is a complete ripoff of the actor's studio. So these are short form questions. They don't require long answers. What is your favorite Yiddish word? Does chutzpah count? It does Chutzpah definitely counts. What is your favorite Jewish holiday?
Beatrice Levine:Passover. I sorry, dad. I know my dad's going to listen, but Moses and the Prince of Egypt was my separate way.
Nicole Kelly:You know, I've never watched that entire movie. I have never seen that entire film. It's terrible.
Beatrice Levine:I have watched it. I've probably watched it like four times last week.
Nicole Kelly:I should put that on the list. Show my daughter. So, since you didn't have a bat mitzvah, if you were to have a bat mitzvah party, what would your theme be If you were to?
Beatrice Levine:have a bat mitzvah party. What would your theme be? I have thought about this for so many years. And now I think it would be Bravo themed, like I think there would have to be like a Real Housewives section, a Summer House section, a Below Deck Med section, Like yeah and Andy.
Nicole Kelly:Cohen could come DJ, of course. I think if you got him drunk enough, he'd bring Anderson Cooper. They're my favorites on New. Year's we specifically tuned in the end of the night just to watch them.
Beatrice Levine:Oh yeah, it's this absolutely serious talking about the mayor. It's great and for anyone who is like an old school bravo fan, I want them to know that I am aligned with kathy griffin in the andy cohen kathy griffin rift. My life on the deal is probably like my gateway drug into reality TV, but I do love Andy. You know I don't want to pick sides. I feel like a child of divorce.
Nicole Kelly:We used to watch the Kathy Griffin show we liked, because I still lived in LA at that point and I had more free time. What?
Beatrice Levine:profession other than your own, would you want to attempt? I don't know, probably journalist.
Nicole Kelly:A good one. If heaven is real and God is there to welcome you, what would you like to hear them say?
Beatrice Levine:I'm sorry. Oh. I'm just kidding. I think everyone wants to hear that. Oh my gosh, I think everyone wants to hear that. Probably something along the lines of I saw you. You held it together with a lot of caffeine, but you did it and I'm proud of you.
Nicole Kelly:I'm Nicole Kelly and this has been SheBrew in the City. Thank you so much for listening in © transcript Emily Beynon.
