Au revoir, Irène!

In one week, Woman of Letters: Irène Némirovsky and Suite Française will close. 

Creating and presenting this groundbreaking exhibition has been a remarkable experience—not only has it received international attention in the press, but everyone who has seen Némirovsky’s original Suite Française manuscript cannot help but be in awe of it. To quote our director, David Marwell, “Even in our contemporary world, with its unlimited supply of sensory opportunities, the experience of being in the presence of an original artifact, especially one as powerful as this, cannot be matched in any medium. I was moved by how this notebook communicated an entire story. I thought at that time, that this manuscript must be part of an exhibition at our Museum, but only if we could also exhibit the valise in which it had rested for more than fifty years before Denise opened and read it for the first time. Together, they would tell an impossibly poignant story about memory and forgetting, about mothers and daughters, about legacy and loss.”