ABOUT
Using the iPad to view the embedded video in the History, Heritage and the Lower East Side series.
Yona Verwer is a multidisciplinary visual artist, born in the Netherlands and based in New York City. She is the recipient of the 2024 Fellowship Grant from the Memorial Foundation for Jewish Culture. Her work explores themes of heritage, immigration, ecology, and spirituality, drawing from a wide spectrum of cultural influences.
Working across painting, installation, and new media, Verwer investigates the intersections between the human experience, the natural world, and spiritual tradition.
Her current series-in-progress are:
From Wampum to Wheat Fields follows the rise of New Amsterdam from fur exchanges with the Iroquois Confederacy to a grain-growing colony built on Atlantic trade and enslaved labor under the Dutch West India Company.
Turning the Tide: Art in the Wake of Plastic and Possibility, visual exploration of plastic pollution in the oceans.
If Not Now, When? Jewish Beginnings in Nieuw Amsterdam, about the earliest Jews in New York City.
Verwer’s art is in the permanent collections of the Mizel Museum and the Philadelphia Museum of Jewish Art, amongst others. Her work has been showcased in over 30 museum exhibitions worldwide, including venues such as the Jerusalem Biennale, Vienna Jewish Museum, Heller Museum, Reginald Lewis Museum of African-American Art, Yeshiva University Museum, Ein Harod Museum, the Bronx Museum,, and the Holocaust Memorial Center.
Her work has garnered attention in publications such as The New York Times, The New Yorker, Art Criticism, Ars Judaica, The Huffington Post, among others.
Her work is featured in Heritage: Jewish Artists in America Since 1900 (Syracuse University Press, 2025) by art historian Matthew Baigell, as well as in his Jewish Identity in American Art: A Golden Age Since the 1970s, and Ori Soltes’ Tradition and Transformation: Three Millennia of Jewish Art.
Verwer’s art has been reviewed in publications such as The New York Times (William Zimmer), The New Yorker (Boris Fishman), Art Criticism (Matthew Baigell), Ars Judaica, The Huffington Post, NRC Handelsblad, and Newsday. Her writing and work have been published in multiple languages.
In 2008, Verwer founded the Jewish Art Salon, where she currently serves as director.
“Verwer is recognized as one of the most significant contemporary figures in the history of Jewish-themed art in America.”
— Matthew Baigell, Heritage: Jewish Artists in America Since 1900 (2025)