[1] Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century was first shown at the Jewish Community Center of Greater Washington in Rockville, Maryland in March 1980.
[7] In September 1980, a set was displayed at the Lowe Art Museum at the University of Miami in Coral Gables, Florida.
The Philadelphia Inquirer called the series "Jewploitation" and a critic for The Village Voice wrote that the show was "hypocritical, cynical and exploitative.
"[1] The New York Times review by Hilton Kramer stated that "the show is vulgar, it reeks of commercialism, and its contribution to art is nil" and that "the way it exploits its Jewish subjects without showing the slightest grasp of their significance is offensive – or would be, anyway, if the artist had not already treated so many non-Jewish subjects in the same tawdry manner".
"[18] In 2006, The National Portrait Gallery wrote that "Warhol's insistence that the subjects be deceased invests the series with an inescapable character of mortality.
Probing the faultlines between the person and their manufactured, surface image, Warhol presents these individuals' fame as a complex metamorphosis".
What once made them controversial – the hint of a jokey, unconscious anti-Semitism – has evaporated, leaving little more than bland, posterlike representations.