Description of the attraction
The Jewish Museum of New York is the owner of the largest collection of Jewish art and culture objects outside Israel. It is located in a beautiful mansion on Fifth Avenue, on that stretch of it called the Museum Mile.
The history of this six-story mansion is curious. It was built for himself in 1908 by the architect Charles Pierpont Henry Gilbert by philanthropist Felix Moritz Warburg. A famous banker, he became famous for helping starving Jews after the First World War and during the Great Depression (in modern Israel, the village of Kfar Warburg is named after him). The building, built in the style of the French Renaissance, was so magnificent that Warburg's father-in-law, Jacob Schiff, feared a wave of envy and anti-Semitism. Warburg's widow Fried donated the mansion to the Jewish Museum in 1944.
The collection of the museum itself was founded much earlier, in 1904. It was based on twenty-six pieces of Jewish ceremonial art, which were collected and donated to the Jewish Theological Seminary of America by Judge Meyer Sulzberger. Later, the collection was replenished with private donations, and in 1947 it was opened to the public in the former Warburg mansion.
Now the collection numbers more than 26 thousand exhibits: paintings, sculptures, archaeological artifacts, items of Jewish ceremonial art. Here are the works of such artists as Marc Chagall, James Tissot, George Segal, Eleanor Antin, Deborah Cass. Some archaeological artifacts are absolutely unique - for example, a bronze vessel from the time of the Bar Kokhba uprising, discovered in a cave in the Judean Desert. A part of the wall of the synagogue from Isfahan (Persia) belongs to the 16th century, which still amazes with the brightness of the polychrome tiles.
The attention of visitors is attracted by a remarkable document - a colorful marriage contract of 1776 (Vercelli, Italy), executed on parchment. Next to the text, a magnificent wedding is depicted with humor - the bride and groom in wedding clothes, musicians, happy guests. The brass kitchen pot from Frankfurt dates back to 1579: this is indicated by the Hebrew inscription, which simultaneously identifies both the year and the purpose of the pot - to store hot stew until Saturday, when kitchen chores are prohibited. The Torah Ark of the late 19th century is amazingly beautiful, made by an emigrant from Russia, the father of twelve children, an old man Abraham Shulkin. The master proudly included his own name in the painting of the ark.
