The Skirball's mission is to serve as a place of meeting guided by the Jewish tradition of welcoming the stranger and inspired by the American democratic ideals of freedom and equality. It presents a variety of exhibitions and other programming on topics relevant to this mission, and Ksenya's curatorial work will reflect that variety, ranging at present from displays in the permanent exhibition on Jewish American history to an upcoming retrospective, the first of its kind, on Fleischer Studios, an early American animation studio that produced such cartoon icons as Betty Boop and Popeye while shaping both the aesthetics and the technology of animation.