Harlan Gallery at Seton Hill University will host the works of photographer Ben Golden and artist Yardena Donig Youner from October 18 to November 16. Golden and Youner will participate in a special artist's talk in Lynch Hall on Seton Hill’s Greensburg, Pa. campus from 7:30 - 8:30 p.m., followed by a reception in Harlan Gallery from 8:30 - 10 p.m., on Monday, November 6, as a featured part of the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education's 7th Holocaust Education Conference. Both the artist's talk and reception are free and open to the public.

Ben Golden’s exhibit, "Being There," consists of 80 black and white photographs, 60 of which will be shown at Seton Hill. Golden, who was born in Chicago in 1931, states, “I was too young to participate in the Second World War yet old enough to be permanently influenced by it and the Holocaust.” In 1999, Golden went to “Auschwitz by way of Krakow” and spent a week there recording impressions with his camera. Golden calls this exhibit “my personal confrontation with the past.” Trained as a pharmacist, Golden studied with photographers Ray McSavaney and John Sexton but considers himself primarily a self-taught artist. He works with both large format (5x7) and 35 mm cameras. Golden has shown his exhibit in many venues, including Chicago’s Roosevelt University, New York’s Columbia College and the Catholic Theological Union of Chicago.

Yardena Donig Youner’s installation "A Letter to Debbie" views the Holocaust through the experience of the late Lieutenant Al Gaynes, who, in a letter written to his wife Debbie in 1945, describes the atrocities which he discovered upon liberating Landsberg Concentration Camp, one of 11 satellite camps of Dachau. Youner and Debbie Gaynes met by chance and began their two-year collaboration and deep friendship as Youner made the letter the subject of her artwork. (Debbie Gaynes will accompany Youner to the artist’s talk and reception.) In describing the installation, Youner states: “I wanted this message to be assertive and strong, but at the same time to be a subtle way of looking at the naked truth. Computer imaging allowed me to soften the background image while leaving the letter as the dominant element. I wanted my audience to read the letter first, and slowly detect the images emerging as if from memory. The twelve panels symbolize the twelve tribes of Israel. In order to let the eye roam freely between the rigid structures of the simulated concentration camp fence posts, I did not confine the panels of the art work to one size length.” The installation was exhibited at The Gallery on the Hudson in Irvington, NY, and will now travel for four years in Germany and Austria. It is also scheduled to tour other European countries in the near future. (Youner has graciously replicated her installation for exhibition at Seton Hill University.) Yardena Donig Youner was born in 1937 and raised in the small town of Pardess Hanna, Israel. Her parents and two older sisters immigrated to Israel from Germany in 1934, due to the rise of Nazism. Youner served in the Israeli Air Force and is a graduate of the National Teacher’s College in Tel Aviv. She later moved to the United States with her American husband and earned her BFA at Lehman College, NY, and her MA at New York University/International Center of Photography Graduate Program. She is a photo-artist, muralist and educator who taught photography at NYU and is a visiting artist for the Westchester Arts Council. She lives in Peekskill, NY.

Harlan Gallery is a professional exhibition space open to the public free of charge, and is located in Reeves Hall on Seton Hill’s Greensburg, Pa. campus. Harlan Gallery is open Monday – Thursday 5 – 8 p.m., Friday 1– 3 p.m. and Sunday 1 – 4 p.m. Docent tours of “Being There” and “A Letter to Debbie,” offered by Seton Hill students from the new Seton Hill course “Artistic Responses to the Holocaust,” are also available. For more information on Harlan Gallery or to arrange for a docent tour, please contact Harlan Gallery Director Carol Brode at 724-830-1071 or brode@setonhill.edu.

For more information on the National Catholic Center for Holocaust Education's 7th Holocaust Education Conference, please visit www.setonhill.edu and click on “Centers;” e-mail ncche@setonhill.edu; or call 724-830-1033.

Seton Hill University, founded by the Sisters of Charity, is a coeducational Catholic liberal arts university in Greensburg, Pa. Chartered in 1918, Seton Hill offers more than 30 undergraduate programs and nine graduate programs, including an MBA. Seton Hill brings the world to its students through its distinguished lecturers and nationally and internationally renowned centers. Recognized three times by Entrepreneur magazine as one of the nation’s Top 100 Entrepreneurial Universities, Seton Hill has also been named one of the Best in the Northeast by The Princeton Review and one of Pennsylvania’s Top 100 Businesses by Pennsylvania Business Central. In addition, Seton Hill has been named a University of Distinction by Colleges of Distinction, an organization founded by a group of concerned parents, educators and admissions professionals. For more information on Seton Hill please visit www.setonhill.edu or call 1-800-826-6234.