Suppression and Expression: A Concert Exploring Art, Mental Health, and Intergenerational Trauma

About this event

Through music, visual art, and brief commentary, this concert will explore intergenerational trauma, mental health, and art. The REgenerate Music Project performs music of composers labeled degenerate artists and suppressed by the Nazis in 20th Century Germany. The string quartet, comprising musicians of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra, seeks to keep those composers’ music alive and to honor their lives. In this concert, the quartet will perform pieces that resonate with the artwork of Norman Klenicki, a self-taught artist and son of Holocaust survivors, who uses his visual art to express and address the symptoms of his bipolar disorder triggered by the legacy of injuries his mother incurred at the hands of Nazi death camp guards.

In 2019, the University of Pittsburgh Center for Bioethics & Health Law created a virtual exhibition of his artwork: Experience, Integration, Expression: The Work of Norman Klenicki . In Fall 2026, the same curator, Bridget Keown, PhD, is mounting an in-person exhibit of Klenicki’s work in the gallery space of Scaife Hall, accessed from the Mezzanine (enter at Terrace and Lothrop Streets), that will be open November 2026 – February 2027. This concert celebrates the opening of this exhibit and the role of music and visual art in expressing and addressing the mental health challenges of intergenerational trauma. The concert and parking are free. It is co-sponsored by the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh, the University of Pittsburgh Master of Arts Program in Bioethics, and the Research, Ethics and Society Initiative of Pitt Research.

Contact for additional information: PittResearchEthics@pitt.edu

Image: Auschwitz Forest by Norman Klenicki