When Jewish art dealer Berthe Weill opened her gallery in 1901, the infamous Dreyfus affair was calling attention to an alarming growth of antisemitism in France, dividing the nation and the Parisian art world alike into two opposing camps. This lecture, by Dr. Maurice Samuels, Professor of French at Yale University and the author of Alfred Dreyfus: The Man at the Center of the Affair (2024), explores Dreyfus’s complex relationship to Judaism and to antisemitism over the course of his life, and the profound effect of the Dreyfus Affair on the lives of Jews around the world.         

Before the lecture, visit Make Way for Berthe Weill: Art Dealer of the Parisian Avant-Garde at the Grey Art Museum during special open hours on Monday, Oct. 21 from 5–6:15pm. Please check in at 20 Cooper Square to access the exhibit.

Free Admission. Guests must register via the button below in advance of the event. Ticketing will close the evening of October 20th. Please have a valid ID with you for check in at the event.

Co-presented by the Grey Art Museum, NYU.

Co-sponsored by the NYU Jewish Alumni Network.

MAURICE SAMUELS is the Betty Jane Anlyan Professor of French and director of the Yale Program for the Study of Antisemitism at Yale University. He is the author of four books: The Spectacular Past: Popular History and the Novel in Nineteenth-Century France (Cornell, 2004); Inventing the Israelite: Jewish Fiction in Nineteenth-Century France (Stanford, 2010 / Hermann, 2017); The Right to Difference: French Universalism and the Jews (Chicago, 2016 / La Découverte, 2022); The Betrayal of the Duchess (Basic Books, 2020). Samuels is a recipient of the Guggenheim Fellowship and of the New York Public Library Cullman Center Fellowship. Alfred Dreyfus The Man at the Center of the Affair (Yale University Press, 2024) is his latest book.