Exhibition: Photographs of Chaim Gross Sculpture

Sculptor Chaim Gross at work on Harvest at 1939 New York World's Fair. Photo by Eliot Elisofon, courtesy of Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation

Exhibition: Photographs of Chaim Gross Sculpture

The current exhibit of photographs of the sculptural work of Chaim Gross (1904-1991), “Displayed: Stages for Sculpture,” is on view until December 16 at the Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation in New York. Gross practiced what he (and contemporaries) called “direct carving” and created totemic human figures out of wood and stone. According to the exhibit organizers he "was a perfect subject for photographers who wanted to capture his creative process." Sculpture, as one of the most active, physical and, of-course, 3-dimensional forms of art, and one that could be represented well in black and white with light and shadow, appealed to photographers and was frequently featured in the many photo and news magazines of the early 20th-century.

According to the Foundation's press release:

"The photographs chart the “stages” in the making of sculpture, and public “stages” displaying Gross’s work, such as the 1939 World’s Fair, educational carving demonstrations, and commercial print media. The exhibition, curated by the Foundation's archivist Zak Vreeland, features images from the Foundation’s collection by renowned photographers Arnold Newman (1918-2006), Eliot Elisofon (1911-73), and Rudy Burckhardt (1914-99). It also includes works by less known, yet equally compelling photographers Robert M. Damora (1912-2009), Soichi Sunami (1885-1971), Walter Rosenblum (1919-2006), and Arnold Eagle (1909-92).

Chaim Gross knew many of these photographers at the beginning of their careers and became particularly close with Arnold Newman and Eliot Elisofon. Gross hired them to record the process of sculpting, both in the privacy of the studio as well as various public venues. The photographers also featured Gross, his house, studio, and sculpture in news stories, fashion spreads, and advertisements in publications such as Life and Glamour. The exhibition explores this relationship between sculpture and photography. It also considers the convergence of two modes of production: Gross’s signature process of hand carving and the mechanical reproduction of the photograph. Of particular interest are photographs of window displays that featured Gross’s sculpture in arrangements with mannequins and merchandise from c. 1940-50 at Bonwit Teller, Saks Fifth Avenue and Lane Bryant. These include an eight-window display for Bonwit Teller designed by the preeminent window designer Gene Moore (1910-98)."

Read more: http://blogs.forward.com/the-arty-semite/139204/#ixzz1QrP1DBfb

View the 1957 film The Sculptor Speaks (17 minutes) on the Gross foundation website.

Read more about the life and work of Chaim Gross at artnet.com.

As it happens, the Syracuse University Special Collection Research Center has four boxes of Gross papers. I'm looking forward to finding time in the next year to examine these, or to interest a student in the project.

Publication: New Book on Eldridge Street Synagogue Restoration

New York, NY. Eldridge Street Synagogue. Restored facade. Photos: Samuel D. Gruber (March 2011)

New York, NY. Eldridge Street Synagogue. Restored 19th century sanctuary and new "rose" window above Ark. Photos: Samuel D. Gruber (March 2011)

Publication: New Book on Eldridge Street Synagogue Restoration
by Samuel D. Gruber

Beyond the Facade: A Synagogue, a Restoration, a Legacy: the Museum at Eldridge Street by Roberta Brandes Gratz, Larry Bortniker and Bonnie Dimun (Museum at Eldridge Street and Scala Publishing, 2011), highlights the almost thirty-year effort to restore New York's Eldridge Street Synagogue. The new book contains an evocative and informative essay by Roberta Brandes Gratz, one of the initiators of the project and the energetic organizer and definer of the work in its early formative phases. As Gratz writes of this and any similar project "There was no time to be discouraged. Restoring a landmark that has been abandoned by those most connected to it historically is only for the young, the persistent, and the deeply committed, and surely not for the faint of heart."

Ms. Gratz was never faint of heart, and she committed as large chunk of her life to saving the grand synagogue and to recovering and retelling the history of the building, its congregation and its role in the American immigrant saga. Gratz was helped by hundreds along the way, and followed in a leadership role by Amy Waterman who advanced the project in substantial ways - raising new awareness and especially large sums of money through various wards and grants.

Innovative restoration methods were developed, especially the excavation and use of a sub-basement level for new mechanical systems, restroom and other necessities. Bonnie Dimun was date brought in a director in 2007. As she says in her afterward to the book, her mandate was to "Get it Done." In just nine months she did just that, making some tough decisions in order to bring the decades-long project to completion. Since then she and her staff have worked to reinvent the building and the project, including the installation of new "rose" window about the Aron-ha-Kodesh, designed by artist Kiki Smith. The original window was destroyed in the 1930s and after debate, the decision was made not to re-create an approximation (since the original design was not known),but rather to create something entirely new, moving the restoration out of the past and into the present.

Since the 1980s the sustaining narrative at Eldridge was about the restoration itself. Now that the most obvious work is done, the presentation has had to shift. Continuing a process begun under Ms. Waterman, Eldridge is now as much about history, family, neighborhood, immigration and cultural life as about architecture and restoration. The new window in the thinking of the project's new leadership bridges the generations. Importantly, in regard to audience, it makes the synagogue both a sacred historic site and a vibrant contemproary art space, too.

This new book doesn't dwell on such issues. It is essentially an annotated photo album of the restoration process that makes it hard to forget all the hard work that lies behind the synagogue's present-day pristine appearance - no matter what direction the building and musuem head in future years. These pictures will make hard to forget how dilapidated the building, now so intact, once was.

Every restoration project should keep such an album, even they cannot afford in the end to publish. With online construction blogs and You-tube posts it is easy to record the process of restoration. The process itself is part of the purpose. At Eldridge Street and elsewhere the process - especially when it is a long one - allows the opportunity to explore and educate, to advocate and debate and to plan for building use for a long sustainable future.

New York, NY. Eldridge Street Synagogue. Stairway. An elevator is now installed in the location of the second stairwell. Photos: Samuel D. Gruber (March 2011)

In Gratz's words "Actually, the slow road to success worked in our favor. We had time to do serious historical research about both the building and the people who used it. If we had had all the money early, we might have ruined the building, replaced things that could have been salvaged, refinished others that could have been conserved and in many ways, erased the patina of time. In the mid-1980s the world of historic preservation, restoration, and conservation was not nearly at its current level of sophistication and nuance."

I first visited the restoration at Eldridge in 1989 soon after I began work as the Director of the Jewish Heritage Council of the World Monuments Fund (WMF). Though WMF chose to look abroad for its Jewish heritage projects - especially after 1989 to Eastern Europe, the image and influence of Eldridge were strongly felt. Conservators, activists and historians from Eastern Europe attending WMF's Future of Jewish Monuments conference in New York in November 1990 visited the restoration and came away educated and inspired.

Soon after, when WMF undertook the restoration of the great Tempel Synagogue in Krakow, Poland, we looked to the Eldridge experience for method. Since then, scores of restoration projects in the U.S. and abroad influenced by the example of Eldridge were completed - ironically long before the actual re-dedication of the Lower East Side synagogue in 2007. Still, they owe a lot to Eldridge as the Jewish monument restoration laboratory par excellance.

This new book is not a history of the synagogue - Annie Polland's Landmark of the Spirit already covers that ground. Neither is it a primer on restoration; a series of specialized conservation studies and reports; or a critical review of the the various stages of work at Eldridge. It is, however, a beautiful and celebratory testimony to the long and difficult work done on the building - an achievement that many people in the 1980s, when it all began, believed a crazy endeavor that would never end. Along the way there were rough patches, some bruised egos, dismissed architects, strained friendships and professional disagreements. But through it all there remained a constancy of vision, an optimism of spirit and a tenacity of commitment that
has hardly been equaled in the annals of historic preservation.

To the hundreds of professionals and volunteers who have worked on the Eldridge Street Project and the thousands of financial contributors to the resotration: Congratulations!

Romania: Radauti Synagogue Restoration

Romania: Radauti Synagogue Restoration

by Samuel D. Gruber

My sister Ruth Ellen Gruber recently reported on her Jewish Heritage Travel Blog that our ancestral synagogue in Radauti, Romania is under restoration, a process that appears to be proceeding quickly - a rare occurrence in Romania - where the Jewish community is overwhelmed with care for so many sites and is always strapped for funds.

Radauti, Romania. Synagogue interior. Photos: Ruth Ellen Gruber

I has a special fondness for the Franz Josef Synagogue - as it is known in memory of the Austrian emperor especially beloved by Bukovina Jews. Not only is it the site of my grandfather's bar mitzvah, but it is one of the first "historic" (by which I mean pre-modern) synagogues I ever visited. I was there with my parents on a trip to Romania in 1972. I was a skinny teenager with longish hair, but taller than any remaining Jew we met in the town (see picture). I remember well how one of the men who showed us the synagogue was amazed (real or feigned) over my hair.

When told I was a great-grandson of Anschel Gruber, he expressed skepticism (in part because of my hair), and said - "Well, Anshel Gruber was a very pious Jew, if you are his grandson, than read..." and he opened a siddur and stuck it in front of my face. Fortunately, my Junior Congregation and bar mitzvah Hebrew was good enough, and I passed the test.

Radauti, Romania. Two views of my visit in 1972. That's me on the bottom left, with my mother Shirley Moskowitz next to me. Note the Moorish-style horseshoe arches on the Ark and Ark wall. Photos: Jacob W. Gruber.

The next time I came to the synagogue was in the bitterly cold winter of 1978, in the company of Ruth, then UPI bureau chief in Belgrade, and Romania's chief Rabbi Moses Rosen (and retinue). Ruth and I accompanied the rabbi on his annual whirlwind Hanukkah pilgrimage to the Jewish communities of Romania. This time the old synagogue was filled with people, brilliantly lit, and filled with song from the children's choir that accompanied Rosen's roadshow. Since then much has changed in Romania - for its diminished Jewish community and for the entire country. But the synagogue still stands and is finally receiving a new lease on life. It is one of the surviving synagogues in the country deemed "operating," and by all accounts it will remain dedicated as a synagogue. How often and when it will be used is uncertain, for there are few Jews left in the area.

Radauti, Romania. Synagogue, interior decoration. The inclusion of instruments is a common occurrence in synagogues of the region - and elsewhere - illustrating the 150th Psalm. Photos: Arthur Schankler.

UK: Skeletons Found in Norwich Well May be Those of Medieval Jews

Anti-Semitic cartoon of 1233 (during the reign of King Henry III) found on an Exchequer Roll. Photo: National Archives (UK)

UK: Skeletons Found in Norwich Well May be Those of Medieval Jews

A few years archaeologists excavated Jewish burials in Tarrega, Spain that showed evidence and violent death, and they put forward the hypothesis that the remains were of victims of a masscre of Jews in that Catalonian town, presumably an event from ca. 1391. Now new archeological evidence from Norwich, England points to the murder of Jews there. Skeletal remains of seventeen individuals found in a well in 2004 has been examined and researched and archaeologists and paleontologists now believe that these were Jewish victims - including many fomr the same family - of brutal murder.

According to a report published and broadcast by the BBC, "The most likely explanation is that those down the well were Jewish and were probably murdered or forced to commit suicide, according to scientists who used a combination of DNA analysis, carbon dating and bone chemical studies in their investigation. The skeletons date back to the 12th or 13th Centuries at a time when Jewish people were facing persecution throughout Europe....Seven skeletons were successfully tested and five of them had a DNA sequence suggesting they were likely to be members of a single Jewish family." Eleven of the bodies were of children from the ages of 2 to 15 with five of them below the age of five.

Dating of the deaths is not precise, especially since Norwich Jews were persecuted in many periods. They were accused in 1144 of the violent murder of the boy, William (of Norwich), the first recorded instance of the infamous "blood libel." Despite the rejection of the charges, the charge led to persecution and at least one community leader was killed. In 1190, at the time of the Third Crusade, many Jews were massacred in York and Norwich, where survivors purportedly took refuge in the city's castle. Still later persecutions including executions of Jews in Norwich in 1230. Jews were expelled from England in 1290.

Read full story here.