Art Collecting by the Galician Jewish Aristocracy: From Majer Jerachmiel von Mises to Artur Lilien-Brzozdowiecki

This article discusses the construction of a Jewish aristocratic identity through art collecting and patronage, in parallel with other “aristocratic” activities and lifestyles. The focus is a particular Galican family ennobled by Franz Joseph I in 1881. The family’s ambitions and achievements are known from a memoir by Artur Lilien-Brzozdowiecki (1890, Lviv-1958, London), who was a great-great-grandson of the community head Rachmiel von Mises (1800-1891), a distant cousin of the artist Moses Ephraim Lilien (1874-1925), and a grandson of the banker Ignacy Lilien, who financed Moses Ephraim’s education. The article considers the self-construction of the family members as art connoisseurs and artists. These included the banker, industrialist, artist, and art collector Maurycy Nierenstein (1840-1917); painter Helene von Mises (1883-1942); architect Marya Lilien (1900-1998); and economist, lawyer, army officer, and collector Artur Lilien-Brzozdowiecki.

Italian-Jewish Patrons of Modern Art in Nineteenth- and Twentieth-Century Italy

With a focus on art donations, this article explores several case studies of Jewish Italian patrons such as Sforni, Uzielli, Sarfatti, Castelfranco, Vitali, and others who supported artists of movements that were considered modern at their time: the Macchiaioli (1850-1870), the Futurists (1910s), the Metaphysical painters (1920s), the Novecento group (1920-1930s), and several post WWII cases. It reflects on differences in art donations by Jews in Italy and other European countries, modes of reception, taste, meanings and strategy of donations, thus contributing to the social history of Italian and European Jewry and the history of collections and donations to public museums.

The Kabbalistic Trees of Gershom Scholem

Scholars have only recently begun to take interest in ilanot (kabbalistic trees), a genre of kabbalistic creativity ignored by Gershom Scholem, the preeminent scholar of Jewish mysticism. Given that Scholem was intimately familiar with manuscripts the world over, his lack of attention to this genre in his innumerable writings must be considered an anomaly in need of explanation. Yet Scholem created ilanot of his own: a series of colorful, poster-size kabbalistic diagrams now held in the Scholem Archives at the National Library of Israel. These were produced to Scholem’s precise specifications for his teaching at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem. My discussion of their production and analysis of their semiotics will range from the personal - including Scholem’s relationship to the graduate students who made these posters for their advisor - to the professional questions of how these images visualize particular kabbalistic ideas. I conclude with an examination of how “Scholem’s ilanot” compare to those crafted by historical kabbalists over the centuries.

Self-Patronage versus State Patronage: Polish and Polish-Jewish Artists React to the Trauma of March ’68

Social tensions in communist Poland were exacerbated with the launching of anti-Zionist propaganda in June 1967. Warsaw students organized numerous protests after the authorities tightened censorship, and later banned the staging of Adam Mickiewicz’s Dziady at the National Theater, considering it to be anti-Soviet. Government forces stifled student protests with numerous arrests, at times causing serious injuries, dismissals from the university, and ultimately the expulsion of Polish citizens of Jewish origin from Poland. The restrictions affected Holocaust survivors who were employed in art schools and cultural institutions. This group included Artur Nacht-Samborski, Jonasz Stern, Eugeniusz Eibisch, and Gizela Szancerowa, among others. Notable artistic testimonies of the experience of March ’68 events and their effects were left by painters and sculptors from the Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, its students, graduates, and lecturers: Witlod Masznicz, Artur Nacht-Samborski, Krystiana Robb-Narbutt, Ewa Kuryluk, Jerzy Jarnuszkiewicz, and others in his studio - Barbara Falender, Henryk Morel, Grzegorz Kowalski, and Krzysztof M. Bednarski. In Cracow, artists belonging to the Wprost (Explicit) group, including Maciej Bieniasz, Zbylut Grzywacz, Leszek Sobocki, and Jacek Waltoś, commented on the events of March ’68 boldly and on an ongoing basis.

Dreaming of Raphael: The Politics and Aesthetics of the Michael-Beer-Stiftung for Jewish Artists

In his will, the poet and playwright Michael Beer (1800-1833) provided an endowment for a prize to support Jewish painters and sculptors to travel to Italy for one year. The grant was placed under the auspices of the Berlin Academy of Art and awarded from 1836 to 1921. This essay focusses on the establishment of the prize, exploring the mindset and motivations of the donor, situated in their historical, social, and ideological contexts. It opens insights into early nineteenth-century Jewish-Christian networks, as well as into contemporary views on national art and the aesthetics of the classical tradition, private patronage and public institutions, Jewish emancipation, antisemitism, and civil rights.

Jewish Art Collectors in Poland and the Works of Maksymilian Gierymski before World War II

From the end of the nineteenth century and up to the beginning of World War II, many of Maksymilian Gierymski’s (1846-1874) works were part of the collections of respected Jewish collectors, including Maksymilian Adam Oderfeld, Edward Rejcher, Stanisław Rotwand, Adolf Peretz, and Abe Gutnajer. They combined buying Polish art with providing financial support for many Polish cultural institutions. Thanks to these collectors the Polish public had better knowledge of Gierymski’s art. They bought his works at a time when the best examples of his oeuvre were abroad. 1939 was a tragic turning point for their activity. Collections were destroyed or stolen, including Gierymski’s work, and most of these items were not catalogued. Nevertheless, the collectors’ knowledge, passion, and expertise raised the bar for standards in Polish art collecting generally. The forgotten activity of Poland’s Jewish collectors is an essential part of the history of nineteenth-century Polish art.