Remembering My Mother, Artist Shirley Moskowitz

Refugees (1942) by Shirley Moskowitz. Marble. Collection of the National Museum of Jewish History

Remembering My Mother, Shirley Moskowitz
by Samuel Gruber

It is hard for me to accept that it has been four years this weekend since my mother, artist Shirley Moskowitz, died in Santa Monica, California at the age of 86.

I've written about some of her art on this blog before, and though Jewish themes were not a major preoccupation in her work, I thought I would remember her on this Jewish Art and Monuments Blog by posting a few of her explicitly Jewish works, many of which will be unknown to her friends and even family members. Several of Shirley's earliest works - or at least those that survive - are of Jewish subjects, reflecting a strong Jewish presence in her life, especially through the Susnitskys, her mother's extended Texan-Jewish family. Her first published drawing is of her Hebrew teacher, submitted to the Jewish youth magazine Young Israel when she was fifteen.

"Undecided about what to draw, I thought of my first Hebrew teacher who has since passed away,"
First published drawing by Shirley Moskowitz, Young Israel (1935).

One of her first large works of sculpture is a marble carving (above) from 1942 of two tired seated figures called "Refugees." If there was any doubt as to the subject of this work, it was made clear when she donated it to the Museum of American Jewish History (now the National Museum of American Jewish History).

Later, in the early 1960s she carved a series of Jewish figures that are essentially nostalgic, and these look back to her childhood memories of attending religious services at her grandfather's synagogue in Brenham, Texas and perhaps again to her Hebrew teacher. Three works - Der Chazin, The Rabbi and Olenu were carved during a period when she most involved with a Jewish community, but in a thoroughly modern way. My family moved into its second suburban home in 1959, a new split-level house in a new housing development outside of Philadelphia. We three children were soon all attending afternoon Hebrew school twice a week and "Junior Congregation" on Saturdays at the Norristown Jewish Community Center, in nearby Norristown, Pa.

Der Chazin (1961) by Shirley Moskowitz. Cherry wood carving. Private Collection.

The Rabbi (1962) by Shirley Moskowitz. Cherry wood carving. Private Collection.

Olenu (1963) by Shirley Moskowitz. Walnut wood carving.

These three sculptures were carved during her Wednesday night carving group that met at the studio of Hans Huneke in Norristown, and they reflect Shirley's then acute awareness of Jewish tradition, but seen through a nostalgic lens. Though I never heard her talk about it, these works might also be as much about a lost Jewish Europe as about a lost Jewish Texas. All her carving companions at Hans's studio were acutely aware of what had happened in Europe. Artist Steffi Greenbaum was a refugee from Berlin. Hans was a non-Jewish anti-Nazi Socialist from Germany and his wife Dini was Jewish. Bernard and Ruth Petlock were also sometime part of the group, and Bernie was born in Bialystok. Another good friend of this group was local artist and Holocaust scholar Mary Costanza.

After 1963, however, Shirley moved away from these themes and subsequently most of her carving centered on groups of figures, usually with children, representing families. This theme more clearly reflected the suburban world around her, where streets, sidewalks and backyards always seemed full of us babyboom kids.

Bar Mitzvah (ca. 1960). Lino-block or woodcut print by Shirley Moskowitz.

About the same time Shirley was making her "Jewish" carving she also tried made a few collages and several lino-block prints based on Jewish holidays and celebrations. I think the prints were primarily made to have a ready source of gifts for the seemingly-never ending births, weddings and bar and bat mitzvahs of the 1960s.

Most of Shirley's work during these years was based on her travels, especially long family trips to Europe in 1959, 1962, 1966 and then a three-year stay in Italy from 1970-1973. She tended to sketch and paint landscape and city scenes outside but often work these into collages and, especially after 1970, prints. Though we often visited Jewish sites on our travels, she only sketched a few. One of her favorite pen and ink works is a beautiful view of the Old Jewish Cemetery in Prague done when we spent the summer in Czechoslovakia in 1966. She later made fine print from this. She also turned a little sketch of the Western Wall (Kotel) in Jerusalem made on a visit to Israel with her mother and aunt in 1971 into a lino-block print, shown here. Later, when two of her three children were involved in the world of Jewish monuments and travel, she made a few more works as I have previously shown.

Old Jewish Cemetery, Prague (1966). Sepia and ink drawing by Shirley Moskowitz.

Western Wall '71 (1971). Lino-cut print by Shirley Moskowitz (artist's proof).

In sum, my mother was more an "Artist who was Jewish" than a "Jewish Artist." She would not reject the title but would insist - correctly - that while her Jewish work was important to her, it is not representative in quantity or quality of her artistic output as whole. She was, however, as Rabbi Laura Geller stated in her eulogy four years ago, a woman of valor in the Jewish tradition.

For more about Shirley Moskowitz click here.

Poland: New Director at Krakow's Galicia Jewish Museum

Krakow, Poland. Galicia Jewish Museum. All photos Samuel D. Gruber, 2008.

Poland: New Director at Krakow's Galicia Jewish Museum

The Galicia Jewish Museum founded in April 2004 in Krakow's Jewish quarter, Kazimierz, has appointed a new director, Kazimierz-born Jakub Nowakowski. Nowakowski has worked at the museum since 2005, most recently as its education direction. The museum is located in a former mill building (see photo above) on the edge of Kazimierz, the former suburb to Krakow's Old Town where Jews were permitted to live, and where a vibrant Jewish culture developed over a period of five centuries. The mission of the museum is "to challenge the stereotypes and misconceptions typically associated with the Jewish past in Poland and to educate both Poles and Jews about their own histories, whilst encouraging them to think about the future."

Nowakowski will replace Kate Craddy who has returned to England, to take up an appointment at the Barber Institute of Fine Arts in Birmingham. Craddy herself became director after the death in 2007 of the museum's founder, the British photographer Chris Schwarz. The museum's core exhibition is formed by Chris's photographs of Jewish heritage sites, taken mainly in the 1990s -- they also form the basis for the book Recovering Traces of Memory, with text by Jonathan Webber.
I congratulate Kate on all she has achieved at the museum, and wish Jakub all the best in his new position.

Nowakowski has an MA in History from the Department of Jewish Studies at the Jagiellonian University, as well as a postgraduate diploma in Management and Marketing from the Kraków School of Economics and Computer Science. He also holds a Tour Leader’s License from the City of Kraków.

In addition to its permanent photographic exhibition, the museum hosts traveling exhibitions about history and art, and also has one of Poland's best Jewish book stores and gift shops, and a hospitable cafe that provides a good rest and meeting place in Kazimierz. My family was pleased to donate one of my mother's (Shirley Moskowitz) monoprints from her Polish synagogue series to the museum in 2009, based on her visits to ruined synagogues in 1993. The wntire series had previously been exhibited at the museum.

The Galicia Jewish Museum employs over 20 full- and part-time staff, in Museum Operations; Education and Research; Projects and Publications; External Relations and Communications; and Finances and Administration. New Museum Director Nowakowski is supported by an active Board of Directors in Poland and a Board of Trustees in the UK, led by Chairman Prof. Jonathan Webber (UNESCO Chair of Jewish and Interfaith Studies, University of Birmingham).

Synagogues and Cemeteries by Shirley Moskowitz Gruber

Top: Shirley Moskowitz. Interior of Synagogue, Pinczow (Poland) and
Below: Cemetery, Rymanow (Poland). Monotypes, 1993.
Collection of Jacob W. Gruber.

Synagogues and Cemeteries by Shirley Moskowitz Gruber
by Samuel D. Gruber

It’s a day after Mother’s Day, but I would like to say something about my own mother, the artist Shirley Moskowitz Gruber (1920-2007). She was a great person and a great mom, but for the purposes of this blog (Jewish art and monuments) I’ll mention some of her artwork. Though she was best known for her landscapes and cityscapes – and especially her work in Italy from the 1970s until shortly before her death in 2007, she also over the years produced a significant number of works devoted to Jewish themes. Shirley was an artist who was Jewish – but not ostensibly or exclusively a Jewish artist. In fact, she never, as far I can recall created any Jewish ritual art or had much interest in it. She did over the years, however, produce several works the subjects of which were Jewish ceremonies. A good example of this is the lino-cut print of children in a Simchas Torah procession made in the early 1960s. This work, like much her output in those years centered on children – especially her own.

Shirley Moskowitz (n.d., early 1960s) Simchath Torah. Lino-cut print.
Collection of Samuel Gruber & Judtih Meighan)

Much later, beginning in the 1990s, she came back to Jewish themes because of the work of two of her children – my sister Ruth and I. In June 1993, she took a break from her work in Italy and traveled with Ruth by car through the Czech Republic and Slovakia to Poland, on her way to surprise me there (where I was leading a tour with Carol Herselle Krinsky sponsored by the World Monuments Fund). Along the way Ruth and Mom stopped at a lot of cemeteries and synagogues which Mom sketched or photographed, and then when she returned to her press in Morruzze (Italy), she produced a series of vivid monoprints recording and interpreting these scenes. A few year later, a visiting friend from Poland saw some of these works and insisted they be shown in Poland, and that began a ten-year traveling itinerary for the works organized by the Jewish Cultural Center in Krakow, that ended at the then-new Jewish Museum in Galicia.



These works have now returned to the family, but I thought I would show some of them here. Today, these scenes and many like them are well-known, but in 1993 they were still a representation of a lost and mostly forgotten world. Its importnat to me that Shirley viewed the remains with a sense of loss, but she also treated them as parts of the landscape as she did the ruins of Italy (or derelict buildings in Philadelphia) which she often painted.

For those who would like to know more abut the life and art of Shirley Moskowitz Gruber, the family has recently created a website. On this you can read an essay about her work that I wrote in 1996 for a retrospective exhibition on the occasion of her 75th birthday. There is also a lovely eulogy by Rabbi Laura Geller, and a memorial essay by Ruth Ellen Gruber. This is a work in progress – we are gradually locating her work and having it photographed. If any of my readers have memories of Shirley or her work, we invite you to contribute these to the site.