Join us for a series of programs traversing four neighborhoods inhabited by Renee and Chaim Gross throughout the 20th century. Organized by the Foundation’s NYU Public Humanities Initiative Pre-Doctoral Fellow Yana Lysenko, this series features both virtual and in-person events.
The Memories of Manhattan series continues with a virtual lecture by Davida Siwisa James about Harlem on Tuesday, April 30 at 6 pm EDT.
Celebrating the release of Davida Siwisa James’ new book Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill, this lecture will explore how Harlem’s boundaries shifted over the centuries. In 1658 it encompassed almost two thirds of Manhattan above 86th Street, but that area would slowly begin to dwindle in the mid-nineteenth century. Advancing into the early twentieth century, the development of new neighborhoods began to shrink Harlem’s original landmass. Now, nearly a century after the period when the Gross family lived there, complex societal factors have further impacted its historic boundaries. The Manhattan neighborhood named for the bravery and beauty of the original Haarlem in the Netherlands is disappearing, compounded by demographic changes and four decades of gentrification. The City of New York makes no official designation of neighborhood parameters, allowing residents, the media, and developers to restate where Harlem begins and ends.
Davida Siwisa James is the CEO of L.A. based Fortuna Business Collective, LLC. As a freelance journalist, she worked for the Pulitzer Prize-winning Virgin Islands Daily News. Her recently released historical nonfiction book Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill: Alexander Hamilton’s Old Harlem Neighborhood Through the Centuries was published by Fordham University Press. Davida grew up between Philadelphia and Harlem. She holds a BA in English from UCLA and attended Penn State Dickinson Law, during which time she was a law clerk for the Pennsylvania Department of Education’s Office of Chief Counsel. She has been a university public relations director and performing arts marketing professional. Davida's other books include The South Africa of His Heart and Life in Brief, a book of short stories and poems.
Yana Lysenko is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature and Russian & Slavic Studies at New York University. Her dissertation focuses on the concept of urban identity in twentieth and twenty-first century Ukrainian literature, cinema and media. She is the 2023-24 NYU Public Humanities Initiative Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation.
Save the date for in-person programs in this series:
Wednesday, May 15
Tuesday, May 28
Memories of Manhattan is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Image: Cover of Hamilton Heights and Sugar Hill by Davida Siwisa James.
Join us for a series of programs traversing four neighborhoods inhabited by Renee and Chaim Gross throughout the 20th century. Organized by the Foundation’s NYU Public Humanities Initiative Pre-Doctoral Fellow Yana Lysenko, this series features both virtual and in-person events.
The Memories of Manhattan series begins with a virtual lecture by Hasia Diner, PhD, about the Lower East Side on Tuesday, April 16 at 6 pm EDT.
The Lower East Side, the neighborhood where Chaim Gross settled upon his arrival in America, was awash with artistic fervor. The creativity of its residents included the graphic arts, theater, music, dance, and more. The origins of this outburst of energy lay in a variety of circumstances—the political fervor which gripped the neighborhood, the liberation felt by so many immigrants upon coming to America, the generational divide between immigrant parents and their American-born children, and even the great poverty of the neighborhood. As other New Yorkers, Jews and non-Jews alike, defined the neighborhood as a slum, they provided resources for new forms of self-expression, largely to help the process of Americanization. This creativity spread to other places where immigrant Jews had settled, making the Lower East Side the epicenter of American Jewish culture.
Tuesday night’s lecture will explore these historical narratives of the Lower East Side and more. Register here to join.
Hasia Diner is Professor Emerita, New York University, where she served as the Paul and Sylvia Steinberg Professor of American Jewish History and Director of the Goldstein-Goren Center for American Jewish History. A prolific author in American Jewish, immigration, and women's history, she is the author of over 10 books, including, Lower East Side Memories: The Jewish Place in America (Princeton University Press) and Hungering for America: Italian, Irish and Jewish Foodways in the Age of Migration (Harvard University Press). A Guggenheim fellow, several of her books have won the National Jewish Book Award.
Yana Lysenko is a doctoral candidate in the Department of Comparative Literature and Russian & Slavic Studies at New York University. Her dissertation focuses on the concept of urban identity in twentieth and twenty-first century Ukrainian literature, cinema and media. She is the 2023-24 NYU Public Humanities Initiative Pre-Doctoral Fellow at the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation.
Save the date for upcoming programs in this series:
Tuesday, April 30: Virtual
Wednesday, May 15: In-person
Tuesday, May 28: In-person
Memories of Manhattan is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
This program is supported, in part, by public funds from the New York City Department of Cultural Affairs in partnership with the City Council.
Image: Illustration from Brockhaus and Efron Jewish Encyclopedia (1906–1913). Educational Alliance building, 197 East Broadway, New York. Wikimedia Commons.
Tactile Transmissions is a free 90-minute Access Program geared toward visitors who are blind or partially sighted. This program focuses on Chaim Gross's work and art collections utilizing verbal description and touch. Educators lead participants in creative activities using a variety of techniques and materials.
Tactile Transmissions is offered in both virtual and in-person formats in a small group setting. Participants joining the in-person sessions engage closely with the home and studio of the Grosses. This unique environment allows for supervised handling of sculpture, tools, and works in progress from Chaim Gross's studio and art collections.
Tactile Transmissions in-person programs will take place on the first Thursday of the month and virtual programs will take place on the second Thursday of the month.
All programs will take place from 11 am to 12:30 pm.
Upcoming In-Person Programs
Thursday, February 1
Thursday, March 7
Thursday, April 4
Thursday, May 2
Thursday June 6
Upcoming Virtual Programs
Thursday, February 8
Thursday, March 14
Thursday, April 11
Thursday, May 9
Thursday June 13
Please RSVP no later than 48 hours before the program begins. Space is limited, and programs will only run if participants sign up.
RSVP to Brittany Cassandra by phone 212-529-4906 or email bcassandra@rcgrossfoundation.org. If you will be bringing a guest, please let us know.
Getting to the Foundation
The Foundation is located at 526 LaGuardia Place, between Bleecker Street and West Third Street. After passing through a wrought iron gate, please enter through the door at your left. There is a buzzer to the left of the door if needed. The first, second, and third floors are accessible by elevator.
Tactile Transmissions is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Please join us at the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation for a book talk with artist photographer Barbara Mensch in conversation with writer Phillip Lopate and journalist Dan Barry. This event celebrates Mensch’s newest photography book A Falling-Off Place: The Transformation of Lower Manhattan (Empire State Editions). The collection of images, which Mensch refers to as her "personal visual timeline", spans four decades and explores the forces that changed the face of Lower Manhattan. With the backdrop of the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation’s art-filled salon where great creative minds convened, the blending of visual artists and writers will generate a thought-provoking discussion about the transformation of neighborhoods in the Village and beyond.
The event will take place on Tuesday, November 28 at 6 pm EST at 526 LaGuardia Place. Please RSVP through Eventbrite as space is limited. A Falling-Off Place will be available for purchase during the event.
Barbara Mensch is a photographer and artist. She has written multiple books including The Last Waterfront: the People of South Street (1985), South Street (2009), and In the Shadow of Genius: the Brooklyn Bridge and its Creators (2018).
Phillip Lopate is an essayist, poet, and American film critic. Lopate has written twenty books including Being with Children (1975) and The Art of the Personal Essay (1994).
Dan Barry is National Senior Writer for The New York Times. He is known for his NYT columns “This Land” and “About New York.”
Image: Barbara Mensch, Waterfront lunch counter, inside the Paris Bar, 1981. Photo courtesy of Barbara Mensch.
This program is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Visit the Foundation for a self-guided tour of the historic home and studio of Chaim Gross and his wife Renee during Open House New York Weekend. The Foundation will be open from 11 am – 5 pm on Saturday, October 21 and Sunday, October 22.
This program is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
The Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation is participating in The Village Trip with an open house on Wednesday, September 20 from 4–7 pm.
The Village Trip is an annual festival celebrating arts and activism across Greenwich and the East Village. The festival begins September 8 and ends September 24. For more information on The Village Trip, please visit their website.
We will have all three floors open for a self-guided visit during the open house. The first floor showcases work by Chaim Gross in his former studio and the adjacent gallery. The second floor houses a temporary exhibition space. The third floor features a historic, salon-style installation of African, American, European, Pre-Columbian, and decorative arts collected by the Grosses. The second and third floors can be accessed by stairs or elevator.
Admission is free, but donations are appreciated. RSVP is suggested.
The Foundation is thrilled to participate in the 2023 Historic Artists's Homes and Studios (HAHS) Virtual Road Trip.
Fueled by the James Castle House in Boise, Idaho, and the Historic Artists' Homes and Studios (HAHS) program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, the third season of the virtual tour series ventures deep into the museums, homes, and preserved spaces that nurtured the creation of thousands of artworks. Events are offered virtually and free of charge upon registration. Live American Sign Language (ASL) is provided.
On the fifth stop of this six-part virtual road trip, we’ll immerse ourselves in the home of sculptor Chaim Gross and his wife and muse, Renee. Located in the heart of Greenwich Village, this four-story townhouse contained the couple's domestic residence and their creative workspaces. Chaim Gross’s one-of-a-kind studio features an intricate wood floor, dramatic skylight, and over 50 of his major wood, stone, and bronze sculptures. Exploring the present-day site, we’ll hear about the programs and opportunities that connect contemporary artists and audiences to the Grosses’ collections, home, and legacy.
For more information about the Historic Artists' Homes and Studios Virtual Road Trip, click here.
Tactile Transmissions is a free 90-minute Access Program geared toward visitors who are blind or partially sighted. This program focuses on Chaim Gross's work and the Foundation's current exhibition Artists and Immigrants utilizing verbal description, touch, and creation. Educators lead participants in drawing with a variety of techniques and materials.
Tactile Transmissions is offered in both virtual and in-person formats in a small group setting. Participants joining the in-person sessions engage closely with the home and studio of the Grosses. This unique environment allows for supervised handling of sculpture, tools, and works in progress from Chaim Gross's studio. Artists and Immigrants features the work of over 50 artists, exploring a variety of historical narratives and artistic styles.
Tactile Transmissions takes place on the second Thursday of each month. Virtual programs take place from 11 am–12:30 pm. In-person programs take place from 12:30–2 pm.
Upcoming Programs
Thursday, February 9: Virtual
Thursday, March 9: Virtual and In-person
Thursday, April 13: Virtual and In-person
Thursday, May 11: Virtual and In-person
Thursday, June 8: Virtual and In-person*
*June virtual and in-person sessions reschduled to Thursday, July 6.
Please RSVP no later than 48 hours before the program begins. Space is limited, and programs will only run if participants sign up.
RSVP to Brittany Cassandra by phone 212-529-4906 or email bcassandra@rcgrossfoundation.org. If you will be bringing a guest, please let us know.
Getting to the Foundation
The Foundation is located at 526 LaGuardia Place, between Bleecker Street and West Third Street. After passing through a wrought iron gate, please enter through the door at your left. There is a buzzer to the left of the door if needed. The first, second, and third floors are accessible by elevator.
Tactile Transmissions is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
The exhibition Artists and Immigrants closes June 30. You can visit the exhibition by booking a House & Studio Tour or joining us for a free open house from 6–8 pm on Wednesday, June 21. The first floor gallery and studio will also be open to the public during the open house.
Artists and Immigrants celebrates the centennial of the immigration of Chaim and Renee Gross to the United States and the many immigrant artists who studied, worked, and interacted with them. Based on the shared experience of immigration, Chaim Gross formed lasting relationships with these artists and, in turn, collected their work—the origins of the Foundation’s collection.
Including over 50 artists and 100 works from the Foundation's collection, the exhibition explores several themes: the personal histories of individual artists; thriving communities in neighborhoods such as Greenwich Village and the Lower East Side; arts education; leisure and travel, including art colonies outside of New York City; the economic hardships and turmoil of the 1930s and 1940s; and the destruction, displacement, and devastation of World War II and the Holocaust.
The catalogue associated with the exhibition will continue to be available for purchase.
You can see related virtual programs on the Centennial page of our website.
Please join us at the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation for a book launch and reception to celebrate the publication of Paula J. Birnbaum's book Sculpting a Life: Chana Orloff between Paris and Tel Aviv. The event takes place on Thursday, February 16 at 6:30 pm EST at the Foundation (526 LaGuardia Place, New York, NY).
RSVP is required. Please register by emailing info@rcgrossfoundation.org by February 14.
From Brandeis University Press:
Sculpting a Life is the first biography of sculptor Chana Orloff (1888–1968), and the first work to include stories from her unpublished memoir. Paula J. Birnbaum weaves a wide range of interviews and archival sources into a compelling narrative, exploring the artist’s early life in Ukraine, her family’s move to Palestine, her years in Paris during two World Wars and thereafter from time to time in Israel. Orloff sought and received strong critical endorsement of her work in France and Israel, however her own sense of home was always in question. Her multiple migrations and forced exiles, combined with her gender and Jewish identities, had a cumulative effect on her life and her art. By examining the impact of exile and living in different countries this book provides a new lens through which to look at artists’ lives and works, especially women and gender-nonconforming artists, who may identify as multinational or placeless. Women artists like Orloff have been overlooked by history and excluded from the canon of modernism within art history. Sculpting a Life brings Orloff to the forefront, tells her story at long last, and shows her historical and artistic significance.
Paula J. Birnbaum is the academic director of the Museum Studies Master of Arts Program and professor of art history and museum studies at the University of San Francisco. She is a specialist in modern and contemporary art. Birnbaum is a former Fulbright Scholar and fellow at the Institute for Research on Women and Gender at Stanford University. She is the author of, among other works, Women Artists in Interwar France.
Image Courtesy of Brandeis University Press.
Join us for the next lecture in our "Artists and Immigrants Series" with Stephen Mack, who will discuss the life and work of Willem de Kooning (1904–97).
Today, Willem de Kooning is recognized as one of the most important and influential painters of his generation. An artist’s artist whose work hangs in museums across the world, it can be easy to forget just how humble his beginnings in the United States were. He arrived in the U.S. at twenty-two years old as a stowaway, not speaking the language, and unaware that there was an interest in fine art in his new home. Focusing on his work, this talk will show how de Kooning’s early experiences in the United States shaped him and his artistic development, and how his hybrid European-American identity marked him and his work as distinct from his contemporaries.
Stephen Mack is Project Manager of the Willem de Kooning Catalogue Raisonné. For over 8 years, he was a researcher on the Revised Catalogue Raisonné of Yves Tanguy’s Paintings, Gouaches, and Objects, then under preparation by The Pierre and Tana Matisse Foundation. Stephen received his PhD in art history from Rutgers University in 2020 writing his dissertation about roughness and non finito in fifteenth-century Italian sculpture from Donatello to Michelangelo.
The virtual program takes place on Wednesday, December 14 at 6 pm EST. The event is free, but donations are appreciated. Registration is required.
In celebration of the centennial of Chaim Gross's immigration to the United States, the Foundation is focusing our programming on illuminating the stories of artists and immigrants in the collection.
Artists and Immigrants is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Join us for the next lecture in our "Artists and Immigrants Series" with Professor Emeritus Myroslav Shkandrij who will discuss the life of David Burliuk (1882–1967).
Before immigrating to the United States in 1922 at the age of 40, Burliuk was a well-known artist and writer. He was known as the "Father of Russian Futurism", was part of Der Blaue Reiter group, and studied art in various countries. Although his immigration in many ways meant starting over, Burliuk became an influential figure in the United States. His circle included artists like Chaim Gross, Moses and Raphael Soyer, Louis Michel Eilshemius, Nicolai Cikovsky, George Constant, and many more. The Foundation's archive holds substantial correspondence from the Burliuks to the Grosses, showing their long friendship and appreciation of one another.
The talk examines the artist's evolution as he traveled and worked in several countries—most notably Ukraine, Russia, Japan, and the United States. Some features of Burliuk's art remained constant even as he continued to experiment with different styles. This lecture will look at what might have been the deeper sources of his inspiration.
Myroslav Shkandrij is Professor Emeritus at the University of Manitoba and presently a Visiting Professor at Columbia University. He has published several books on the cultural and political history of Ukraine and Russia, including recent books on the avant-garde and revolutionary upheavals in Ukraine over the last hundred years. He has also curated several art exhibitions.
The virtual program takes place on Wednesday, November 16 at 6 pm EST. The event is free, but donations are appreciated. Registration is required.
In celebration of the centennial of Chaim Gross's immigration to the United States, the Foundation is focusing our programming on illuminating the stories of artists and immigrants in the collection.
Artists and Immigrants is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Prior lectures can be found on the Foundation's Centennial page.
Join us for the return of "Tactile Transmissions" either virtually or in-person. Tactile Transmissions is a 90-minute Access Program geared toward visitors who are blind or partially sighted. The program focuses on Chaim Gross's work and the Foundation's current exhibition, Artists and Immigrants, utilizing verbal description and creation.
We are hosting both virtual and in-person sessions:
Friday, September 16 (virtual), 11 am - 12:30 pm
Saturday, September 17 (in-person), 11 am - 12:30 pm
Friday, October 7 (in-person), 11 am - 12:30 pm
Friday, November 4 (virtual), 11 am - 12:30 pm
Saturday, November 12 (in-person), 11 am - 12:30 pm (UPDATED)
Friday, December 9 (in-person), 11 am - 12:30 pm
Saturday, December 10 (virtual), 11 am - 12:30 pm
Due to limited space, please RSVP to Brittany Cassandra by phone 212-529-4906 or email bcassandra (at) rcgrossfoundation (dot) org. If you would like to bring a guest, please let us know.
Tactile Transmissions is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Free; no reservations required
SoHo Arts Network (SAN) is pleased to present its Fall 2022 program: the Downtown Culture Walk, a self-guided walking tour highlighting the non-profit art spaces in SoHo and surrounding neighborhoods. Members of SAN will open their doors for the Downtown Culture Walk, inviting participants to discover and enjoy our creative community. Walkthroughs, open hours, and other programming will be offered throughout the day for free or reduced admission.
Participating SAN members include apexart; CIMA – Center for Italian Modern Art; Grey Art Gallery, New York University; Judd Foundation; Leslie-Lohman Museum of Art; The Milton Resnick and Pat Passlof Foundation; Soho Photo Gallery; Swiss Institute; The Drawing Center; and The Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation.
More information, including a map of all participating organizations and programming schedule, is available on SAN's website.
Art in America is the media partner for the Downtown Culture Walk.
About the SoHo Arts Network
The SoHo Arts Network (SAN) is a working network of non-profit art spaces in and around SoHo. Founded in 2014 by a small group of non-profit arts organizations, the network celebrates the rich history of our unique creative community and collectively shares our distinct cultural contributions with neighborhood residents and visitors. SAN seeks to further growth of the arts through collaborative public programs that explore the neighborhoods’ rich cultural histories.
The Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation is participating in the 20th Annual Open House New York Weekend. Our doors will be open from 11 am to 4 pm on Saturday, October 22 and Sunday, October 23. All three floors of the Foundation will be available for self-guided tours. These include the first floor gallery and historic studio of Chaim Gross, the second floor temporary exhibition Artists and Immigrants (on view until December 23), and the third floor living spaces, which include a salon-style installation of the Grosses' historic collections.
Free; no reservations required
Learn more about OHNY and the 250+ locations participating in all five boroughs on their website.
Please Note: Masks are still required at the Foundation.
Join us for the next lecture in our "Artists and Immigrants Series" with Professor Emeritus David Scrase, who will discuss the life, work, and writings of photographer Bernard Gotfryd (1924 - 2016).
In his life before immigration, Bernard Gotfryd became a master of photography. As Poland was engulfed by World War II, with the camps and genocide dominant, Gotfryd was deprived of camera and darkroom for four years. After his immigration to the United States, where he became a renowned photojournalist for Newsweek, he ultimately responded to his mother’s last words as she was deported to her death—write about everything so that the world knew the truth of the Holocaust. In the 1980s, he published his first tales in Midstream and Newsweek. Gotfryd's book Anton the Dove Fancier: and Other Tales of the Holocaust was first published in 1990, and an expanded edition was released in 2000. With no camera during the Holocaust, Gotfryd was unable to record what happened as he went from the house he grew up in, to the ghetto, to a series of camps, until he was liberated in May 1945. But, his experiences remained with him as striking images with clear-cut details. With his “photographer’s eye”, Gotfryd rescued those images, each tale vividly providing a back-drop, scenery, and action of the dramatic events.
The virtual program takes place on Wednesday, October 19 at 6 pm EDT. The event is free, but donations are appreciated. Registration is required.
Born in England in 1939, David Scrase made Germany, its language and culture, not least its history, his career. After having bounced around in England, Germany, France, Switzerland, and Austria, he immigrated in 1969 to the United States, where he became Professor of German and the founding Director of the Carolyn and Leonard Miller Center for Holocaust Studies at the University of Vermont. He lives in Vermont and enjoys retirement with gentle reading and research coupled with woodworking and gardening.
In celebration of the centennial of Chaim Gross's immigration to the United States, the Foundation is focusing our programming on illuminating the stories of artists and immigrants in the collection.
Artists and Immigrants is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Prior lectures can be found on the Foundation's Centennial page.
Join us for the next "Artists and Immigrants Series" program with artist and writer Mira Schor, who will discuss the lives and work of her parents.
Two Polish artists, Ilya Schor and Resia Schor, arrived in New York on December 3, 1941, fleeing the Nazis. They had not planned to come to the United States, but found new opportunities in their adopted home. Ilya Schor (1904-61) was born in Austrian Galicia in an area that is now Ukraine. He was a noted artist of Judaica, painter, sculptor, creator of exquisite jewelry, and illustrator for major Jewish writers including Sholem Aleichem and Rabbi Abraham Joshua Heschel. Resia Schor (1910-2006), née Ainstein, was trained as a painter in her homeland of Poland. After the death of her husband, she picked up his tools and made powerful works of jewelry, Judaica, and sculpture.
The virtual program takes place on Wednesday, June 8 at 6 pm EDT. The event is free, but donations are appreciated. Registration is required.
Mira Schor is a New York-based artist and writer noted for her advocacy of painting in a post-medium visual culture and for her contributions to feminist art history. Schor received her MFA from CalArts in 1973 where she was a member of the CalArts Feminist Art Program and a participant in the historic feminist art installation Womanhouse. She is the recipient of awards in painting from the Guggenheim, Rockefeller, and Pollock-Krasner Foundations and of the College Art Association’s Frank Jewett Mather Award in Art Criticism. Schor’s work has been included in exhibitions at the Hammer Museum, P.S.1, The Neuberger Museum, The Jewish Museum, and The Aldrich Museum. Schor is the author of Wet: On Painting, Feminism, and Art Culture and A Decade of Negative Thinking: Essays on Art, Politics, and Daily Life, and co-editor of M/E/A/N/I/N/G: An Anthology of Artists' Writings, Theory, and Criticism and M/E/A/N/I/N/G Online. She is an Associate Teaching Professor at Parsons. In 2017 Mira Schor was elected to the National Academy. She is the recipient of the 2019 Women’s Caucus for Art Lifetime Achievement Award for her work as a feminist painter, art historian and critic. She is represented by Lyles & King Gallery in New York City.
Photo: Ilya Schor and Resia Schor at The Warsaw Academy of Fine Arts, c. 1935. Photograph courtesy of Mira Schor.
Artists and Immigrants is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Join us for a celebration of the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation's new publication Artists and Immigrants. The catalogue features four original essays, brief biographies of the more than 50 artists in the exhibition, and a checklist of the exhibition Artists and Immigrants (April 7–December 23, 2022). Essay authors include Sasha Davis, Executive Director, Brittany Cassandra, Collections and Programs Manager, Clare Richfield, 2021-22 NYU Public Humanities Graduate Research Fellow, and Emma Young, 2020-21 NYU Public Humanities Graduate Research Fellow.
This publication is made posssible by a generous grant from the Robert David Lion Gardiner Foundation of New York.
Artists and Immigrants is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Join us for the next "Artists and Immigrants Series" program with emerita professor Janet Zandy. Born in Berlin but self-identified as a Hungarian émigré from fascist Europe, Marion Palfi (1907-78) embraced her acquired U.S. citizenship and the promise of American democracy. Palfi was a pioneering, methodical, 20th-century photographer whose life and work deserve wider recognition. Palfi insisted that each photograph “must tell the whole story even without words.” And she told many stories through her innovative and deeply researched series, from her early “Great American Artists of Minority Groups”, which included Chaim Gross, to her later photographs of Southwest Native Americans. Her persistent theme was the tension between professed democracy and stubborn injustice.
The virtual program takes place on Wednesday, March 23 at 6 pm EDT. The event is free, but donations are greatly appreciated. Registration is required.
Janet Zandy is emerita professor from Rochester Institute of Technology. She is the author of the award-winning Hands: Physical Labor, Class, and Cultural Work and editor of Calling Home: Working-Class Women's Writings; Liberating Memory: Our Work and Our Working-Class Consciousness; What We Hold in Common: An Introduction to Working-Class Studies; and co-editor (with Nicholas Coles) of the Oxford Anthology of American Working-Class Literature. Her most recent book is Unfinished Stories: The Narrative Photography of Hansel Mieth and Marion Palfi. She is the recipient of numerous awards, including an Ansel Adams Research Fellowship, a Peter E. Palmquist Memorial Award, an SPE Conference Award for Excellence in Historical, Critical and Theoretical Writing, and a 2020 Lifetime Achievement Award from the Working-Class Studies Association. She is also a practicing visual artist specializing in encaustics.
Marion Palfi, Untitled photo of the Gross Family, 1944. Collection of the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation. © Center for Creative Photography, Arizona Board of Regents
Artists and Immigrants is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Join us for the return of "Tactile Transmissions" either virtually or in-person. Tactile Transmissions is a 90-minute Access Program geared toward visitors who are blind or partially sighted. The program focuses on Chaim Gross's work and the Foundation's current exhibition, Hands Cannot Hold: Fantasy Drawings by Chaim Gross, utilizing verbal description and creation.
We are hosting both virtual and in-person sessions. The virtual program will take place on Saturday, March 5 from 11 am to 12:30 pm EST. The in-person programs will take place on Friday, March 11 and Saturday, March 12, both from 11 am to 12:30 pm EST. Due to limited space, please RSVP to Brittany Cassandra by phone 212-529-4906 or email bcassandra@rcgrossfoundation.org. If you would like to bring a guest, please let us know.
Tactile Transmissions is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Join us for the next program in our "Artists and Immigrants Series" as we look at artist Federico Castellón (1914-71), a close friend of Chaim Gross. Born in Almería, Spain, Castellón lived in Barcelona until 1921, when his parents moved the family to Brooklyn, New York. Forced to adapt to a new language and self-conscious as “a foreigner,” he retreated into art, spending hours at New York museums and sketching. Just as Castellón finished high school in 1933, he was introduced to Diego Rivera, who helped secure an exhibition for him at the prominent Weyhe Gallery, as well as a scholarship to study art in Europe. In Paris at age 20, he exhibited with Salvador Dali, Picasso, Miro, and other Spanish artists in the Paris scene of the 1930s. At the outbreak of WWII, he served in China with the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) as an artist and map illustrator. After the war he lived between New York, Madrid, and Paris. Castellón worked in all media, and his dreamlike, distorted images were sometimes associated with Surrealism, but the human figures in his etchings demonstrate the full range of his artistic skill and vision.
The virtual program takes place on Wednesday, February 16 at 6 pm EST. The event is free, but donations are greatly appreciated. Registration is required.
Elisa Castellon is the niece of Federico Castellón. She grew up in an environment of art and design, and though she practiced law as her career, she remained involved in the promotion and appreciation of art. She brought Castellón’s art back to Almería, Spain, the city of his birth, in 2006 to the nationally recognized Acanto Gallery. In 2008, she helped organize the major exhibition "Federico Castellón: de Almería a Nueva York" at Museo de Almería in Spain and presented on Castellón’s art while there. Her research has focused on Castellón’s letters and the letters of his contemporaries at the University of Syracuse, the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art, and the University of Pennsylvania. She remained in touch with Castellón’s widow, Hilda, and son, Paul, before their deaths, and is very pleased to have located Castellón’s grandson in Madrid and to have formed a friendship with him. She is now working on letters from her grandparents in Spain before the Spanish Civil War to write an account of how drastically lives changed in Spain with the onset of the dictatorship.
Artists and Immigrants is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Join us for the first "Artists and Immigrants Series" program of 2022 as we look at artist Yasuo Kuniyoshi (1889-1953), who knew Chaim Gross through the WPA. Professor Tom Wolf will evaluate the art and career of Kuniyoshi in terms of his identity as an immigrant to the United States from Japan. As one of the most important Asian American artists of his time, Kuniyoshi's art oscillated between elements from Asian artistic traditions and Euro-American ones. Although his entire artistic career was in the United States, because he was born in Japan, Kuniyoshi was never eligible to become a citizen. This situation played a critical role in his life and career.
The virtual program takes place on Wednesday, January 26 at 6 pm EST. The event is free, but donations are greatly appreciated. Registration is required.
Tom Wolf, Ph.D., is Professor of Art History and Visual Culture at Bard College. His primary areas of research include the history of art in the Woodstock, New York art colony and Asian American art. Recent publications include "The Tip of the Iceberg: Early Asian American Artists in New York" in Asian American Art: A History, 1850 - 1970 (Stanford University Press, 2008); The Artistic Journey of Yasuo Kuniyoshi (Smithsonian American Art Museum, 2015); "The Centennial of the Woodstock Artists Association" (The Woodstock Artists Association, 2019); and "Doris Lee in Woodstock" in Simple Pleasures: The Art of Doris Lee, (The Westmoreland Museum of American Art, 2020).
Image: Yasuo Kuniyoshi, "Wire Cyclist" 1939, lithograph. Collection of the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation. © 2021 Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
Artists and Immigrants is made possible by the New York State Council on the Arts with the support of the Office of the Governor and the New York State Legislature.
Over the past year, we have heard from lecturers about specific artists in the Foundation's collection who were also immigrants. We learned about their trials, tribulations, and successes individually. For our final program of 2021, we want to address the history of immigration in a larger context.
Join us for a virtual tour of ARRIVALS, on view through January 23, 2022 at the Katonah Museum of Art, led by Heather Ewing, curator of the exhibition. The show is organized around a series of "arrival moments" — Columbus, the Middle Passage, the Mayflower, Ellis Island / Angel Island, WW2, 1965, and Today — in order to explore some of the myths and origin stories that have shaped American identity. ARRIVALS asks how artists over several centuries have helped to construct, disrupt, or challenge these stories, how they have navigated their own arrival stories, and how they are imagining new kinds of stories to tell in the future.
The virtual progam takes place on Wednesday, December 15 at 6 pm EST. The event is free, but donations are greatly appreciated. Registration is required.
Some of the 50+ artists represented include Hannelore Baron, María Magdalena Campos-Pons, Enrique Chagoya, Willie Cole, vanessa german, Mohamad Hafez, Dorothea Lange, Titus Kaphar, Cannupa Hanska Luger, Annu Palakunnathu Matthew, Sara Rahbar, Faith Ringgold, Ben Shahn, Bernarda Bryson Shahn, Roger Shimomura, Jaune Quick-to-See Smith, Saul Steinberg, Stephanie Syjuco, Hank Willis Thomas, Kara Walker, and N.C. Wyeth.
Heather Ewing is Associate Dean for Administrative Affairs at the New York Studio School and, since 2000, has been a Research Associate of the Smithsonian Institution Archives. From 2013 to 2018, she was the founding Executive Director of the Center for Italian Modern Art. She is the author of a number of books, including The Lost World of James Smithson: Science, Revolution, and the Birth of the Smithsonian (Bloomsbury, 2007).
Join us for a discussion with Samantha Baskind, Ph.D. on artist Raphael Soyer (1899-1987), a close friend of Chaim Gross. Soyer, whose Russian Jewish family settled in Manhattan in 1912, was devoted to painting people in their everyday urban lives. He came to be known especially for his representations of city workers and the down-and-out, and for his portraits of himself and his friends. Soyer was greatly influenced by his religiocultural identity and by the Jewish American immigrant experience. This talk examines the painter's art and life in the rich context of religious, cultural, political, and social conditions in the twentieth-century United States.
The event is free, but donations are greatly appreciated. Registration is required.
Samantha Baskind, Professor of Art History at Cleveland State University, is the author of six books, including Raphael Soyer and the Search for Modern Jewish Art and, most recently, The Warsaw Ghetto in American Art and Culture. She has contributed more than 100 articles and reviews on a variety of subjects to museum catalogues, academic journals, edited volumes, encyclopedias, and the mainstream press. She served as editor for U.S. art for the 22-volume revised edition of the Encyclopaedia Judaica and is currently series editor of “Dimyonot: Jews and the Cultural Imagination,” published by Penn State University Press.
Join Valerie Balint, senior program manager for Historic Artists' Homes and Studios program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, in a discussion that places Chaim Gross and his LaGuardia Place home in the context of other preserved artist sites throughout the nation, which comprise the Historic Artists' Homes and Studios (HAHS) network of sites — from Georgia O'Keefe's southwestern adobe compound in New Mexico, to woodworking virtuoso, Wharton Esherick's artisan handmade home in Pennsylvania. Balint's lecture will draw from her recently published Guide to Historic Artists’ Homes & Studios, the first guidebook featuring sites in the Historic Artists' Homes and Studios program. Twenty years ago, the National Trust for Historic Preservation created this professional consortium, which today includes 48 preserved artists’ homes and studios throughout the country — across 22 states. In 2018, The Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation was accepted into membership of this prestigious coalition. A visit today to this uniquely intact preserved artist's home and studio provides a rare opportunity for immersion into the intersection of artistic process and personal biography.
The event is free, but registration is required. Donations are greatly appreciated.
Valerie Balint is the Senior Program Manager for Historic Artist’s Homes and Studios (HAHS), a program of the National Trust for Historic Preservation, which is administered at Chesterwood (the former home and studio of sculptor Daniel Chester French) and the author of the newly released Guide to Historic Artists' Homes and Studios (Princeton Architectural Press, June 2020). HAHS is a nation-wide consortium of 44-member sites that were the home and working studios of American artists. Prior to heading HAHS in beginning in spring 2017, Balint served for seventeen years on the curatorial staff at Frederic Church’s Olana (also a HAHS site), most recently as Interim Director of Collections and Research. She was co-organizer and co-curator of Olana’s annual exhibitions and accompanying publications.
Join us virtually on Wednesday, October 20 at 6 pm for the next lecture in our Artists and Immigrants series. Paula Hornbostel, Director of the Lachaise Foundation, will discuss the life and work of artist Gaston Lachaise (1882-1935).
Gaston Lachaise was born in France and arrived in Boston in 1906, moving to New York in 1912. He left his homeland in pursuit of the woman who would become the impetus and inspiration of his life’s work, Isabel. Schooled in Paris, Lachaise discovered that America was a fertile place for a burgeoning modern artist. Rubbing shoulders with the artists and writers of Greenwich Village, amidst rallies for suffrage and prohibition, he was inspired to exhibit, carve portraits and commissions, while also nurturing his private vision of the archetypal woman. Lachaise pushed the boundaries of art, from the roaring twenties through the Great Depression, all while aiming to express “the glorification of the human being, of the human body, of the human spirit, with all that there is a daring, of magnificence, of significance.”
The event is free, but donations are greatly appreciated. Registration is required.
Paula Hornbostel is the Director and a Trustee of the Lachaise Foundation which serves to protect, promote, and perpetuate the legacy of Gaston Lachaise for the public benefit. She has helped organize exhibitions, facilitated loans, and lectured at museums on his life, work, and letters. She holds a BA from Harvard University and an MA from NYU's Institute of Fine Arts. In 2009, she collaborated on the documentary film "Flesh in Ecstasy: Gaston Lachaise and the Woman He Loved," with George Stoney and David Bagnall, and during the pandemic, she made a documentary film with her daughter entitled “Inside the Toolbox of Gaston Lachaise.”
Join us virtually this fall for the return of our Artists and Immigrants series. On Wednesday, September 22 at 6 pm Parker Field will discuss the life and work of artist Arshile Gorky (c. 1904–1948).
Born Vosdanig Adoian in the village of Khorkom, Van, on the western border of the Ottoman Empire (present-day Turkey), Gorky came to the United States in 1920 after escaping the Armenian genocide. Shortly thereafter, under the new name Arshile Gorky, he moved to New York where he would become a flamboyant and central figure of the downtown art scene for twenty years. The discussion will present Gorky's biography – its traumas and successes – as well as the ways in which the artist himself, in addition to his work, resisted his own biography. Of what use is biography in assessing someone who made himself up?
The event is free, but donations are greatly appreciated. Registration is required.
Parker Field is a writer and art historian in New York. He currently serves as the Managing Director of the Arshile Gorky Foundation, where they are completing research on a forthcoming digital catalogue raisonné of Gorky's complete works. The first installment of the catalogue raisonné will be published online with free access in October 2021.
Join us on Wednesday, June 9 at 6 pm, as we welcome Debra Caplan who will discuss a brief history of Yiddish theater's journey and impact from its origins in Eastern Europe, to the global travels of the Vilna Troupe, to the Lower East Side. Yiddish theater was a popular form of entertainment in New York City in the early 20th century. As a Yiddish speaker, Chaim Gross and his friends attended theater and vaudeville performances, including those of the Vilna Troupe. Gross utilized the performances as opportunities to view the human body in motion, which was a central part of his work.
The event is free, but donations are greatly appreciated. Registration is required.
Debra Caplan is Associate Professor of Theater at Baruch College, City University of New York. Her 2018 book, Yiddish Empire: The Vilna Troupe, Jewish Theater, and the Art of Itinerancy won the 2019 George Freedley Memorial Prize from the Theatre Library Association and the Fenia and Yaakov Leviant Memorial Prize from the Modern Language Association. She is currently working on a book about Yiddish theater actress Molly Picon.
Join us for the next installment of our Artists and Immigrants series with Laurie Wilson who will discuss the life and work of artist Louise Nevelson (1899-1988). Born in Russia, Nevelson came to the United States with her parents as a child. After moving to New York City in 1920, she primarily did painting and drawing until the 1930s. In 1934 as an artist participating in the Works Progress Administration (WPA), Nevelson taught painting to children while also studying sculpture with Chaim Gross. It was then that she discovered her lifelong vocation. Though Gross and Nevelson had different memories on the length of her study, both recognized that she had innate talent and a natural sense for working in three dimensions. She emerged firmly planted on her artistic path as a sculptor.
The program takes place on Wednesday, May 12 at 6 pm EDT. The event is free, but donations are greatly appreciated. Registration is required.
Laurie Wilson is a psychoanalyst, art historian, and art therapist. She received psychoanalytic training at the NYU Psychoanalytic Institute and is on the faculty at Psychoanalytic Association of New York (PANY) affiliated with NYU School of Medicine. She has published extensively in three fields including Alberto Giacometti: Myth, Magic and the Man (Yale, 2003) and Louise Nevelson: Light and Shadow (Thames & Hudson, 2016).
Join us for the fourth installment of our Artists and Immigrants series with Alexandra Keiser, PhD, who will discuss the artist Alexander Archipenko (1887-1964). Dr. Keiser’s presentation addresses Archipenko's experience of multiple immigrations. She will focus on aspects of his processes of acculturation and what they would mean for his artistic practice. Initially, Archipenko left Kiev in 1908 and moved to Paris. In 1921, he married the German Expressionist sculptor Angelica (Gela) Forster (1892-1957) and relocated to Berlin. In 1923, the couple immigrated to the USA, where Archipenko worked and taught in many places, including New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and upstate New York.
The program takes place on Wednesday, April 14 at 6 pm EDT. The event is free, but donations are greatly appreciated. Registration is required.
Alexandra Keiser is research curator at the Archipenko Foundation. She holds a doctoral degree from the Courtauld Institute in London and a master's degree in art history from the University of Trier in Germany. Dr. Keiser has lectured and published widely on the artist Alexander Archipenko and is co-editor of the Archipenko catalogue raisonné. She curated the traveling retrospective: Archipenko: A Modern Legacy (2015-2018) and co-edited the book Archipenko Revisited (2008).
Photo: Alexander Archipenko working on the sculpture "Moses" in 1939. The image comes from the artist's archives, courtesy of the Archipenko Foundation.
How can cross-cultural conversations about migration from Eastern Europe throughout the Americas better inform us about the importance of art in constructing identity and forging community? How did the experience of migration impact these artists' careers; and conversely, how did art impact their experiences of migration or displacement?
Join us for our two part program Wednesday, March 3 at 6 pm EST and Thursday, March 18 at 6pm EDT as Emma Young, the Foundation's 2020-21 Mellon Foundation Public Humanities Fellow, moderates a virtual conversation with three distinguished scholars from Brazil: Helouise Costa, Claudia Mattos Avolese, and Maria Luiza Tucci Carneiro. The presenters will delve into the questions above as well as discuss 20th century migration from Eastern Europe to South America and the particular lessons and challenges faced. The event is free, but donations are greatly appreciated. Registration is required.
This program is slightly different than our past virtual programs. There will be both pre-recorded segments and a live Q&A with the presenters. Some pre-recorded segments will be in Portuguese with English subtitles. We look forward to your participation in the third installment of our Artists and Immigrants series.
Helouise Costa is a curator and professor at the Museum of Contemporary Art of the University of São Paulo (MAC USP) where she is in charge of researching and curating the museum’s collection with an emphasis on the relationship between art and photography. The emergence and the development of modern photography in Brazil has been a major theme of her studies. She is coauthor of the books Modern Photography in Brazil (CosacNaify, 2004) and The Origins of Photojournalism in Brazil (Instituto Moreira Salles, 2012). She is currently researching the history of photographic exhibitions held in Brazil from the 1940s to the 1980s, the period in which photography became recognized as an art form.
Claudia Mattos Avolese is Professor of Art History at the University of Campinas in Brazil, and a lecturer at the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts. She holds a Ph.D. from the Free University in Berlin and publishes primarily on nineteenth- and twentieth-century art in Brazil and Europe. Among others, Professor Mattos Avolese has published several books and articles on the Lithuanian artist Lasar Segall. Her presentation will discuss the significance of the migration experience for Lasar Segall’s work, both in Germany and in Brazil.
Maria Luiza Tucci Carneiro is a Historian and Senior Professor in the Department of History at the University of São Paulo’s College of Philosophy, Letters, and Human Sciences. Her recent publications include Impressos Subversivos: Arte, Cultura e Política no Brasil (Editora Intermeios, 2020) and Ten Myths About the Jews (Sussex Academic Press 2020). She is the coordinator of LEER - Laboratory for the Study of Ethnicity, Racism, and Discrimination, where she is developing Travessias, A Brazilian Historical-Biographical Dictionary: The Legacy of Intellectuals, and Scientists Rooted in Brazil, which includes both international and Brazilian researchers.
Emma Young is a sixth year Ph.D. candidate in the department of History at NYU. Her research and writing center closely on the intersections of technology, ecology, and social conflict related to urbanization in Brazil. Her research seeks ways to dismantle historical patterns of socio-environmental inequality and exclusion. She is also a professional translator, most often in the Latin American arts. She is the 2020-21 Mellon Foundation Public Humanities Fellow at the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation.
Image:
Lasar Segall (Vilna Lituânia, 1889 - São Paulo, SP, 1957)
Emigrantes III, 1936, sand and oil on canvas, 86 x 197.7 cm
Collection of the Pinacoteca do Estado de São Paulo, Brasil. Purchased by Governo do Estado de São Paulo, 2012. Photo: Isabella Matheus. © Museu Lasar Segall
Join us virtually for a discussion with Diana Linden, Ph.D. as she explores the life and art of Ben Shahn (1898 - 1969). Born in Lithuania, Shahn immigrated to New York with his family at eight years old. He apprenticed with a lithographer at a young age and studied for a short time at the National Academy of Design as well as the Art Students League. Shahn's career took off beginning in the 1930s, which is the decade Linden's conversation will focus on. The program takes place on Wednesday, February 10at 6 pm EST. The event is free, but donations are greatly appreciated. Registration is required.
Dr. Diana L. Linden is the author of Ben Shahn's New Deal Murals: Jewish Identity in the American Scene (2015) along with many other works on Shahn, New York City Jewish artists, and New Deal Art. In 2019, she won the Frost Prize for best article in the journal Smithsonian Studies in American Art. She has also previously written on the Renee and Chaim Gross Foundation in The Magazine Antiques.
Join us virtually for a conversation with Alicia Longwell, Ph.D., who will discuss the artist John D. Graham (1886-1961). Graham was a mentor to many modern artists, as well as a writer, painter, and friend of Chaim Gross's. Born in Kiev, Graham immigrated to the United States in 1920 and made a name for himself. Learn more about Graham's life and his connection to Gross during the program, which takes place on Wednesday, January 13, 2021 at 6 pm EST. The event is free, but donations are greatly appreciated. Registration is required.
Alicia Longwell, Ph.D., is the Lewis B. and Dorothy Cullman Chief Curator, Art and Education, at the Parrish Art Museum in Water Mill, NY. She curated the exhibition "John Graham: Maverick Modernist" in 2017, which included two loans from the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation collection.
Join us at the Foundation for a brief virtual tour celebrating Open House New York Weekend. Releasing October 17, 2020, enjoy a visit to the home, studio, and art collections of Renee and Chaim Gross by watching on Vimeo or the Foundation's films page.
To see all 150+ sites hosting online events, please visit Open House New York Weekend's main page.
Debuting in connection with Open House New York Weekend 2020, the Foundation welcomes Kurt Hirschberg, Project Manaager and Architectural Designer at Jan Hird Pokorny Associates, for a recorded discussion with Executive Director Sasha Davis on the 2017-18 restoration of the historic studio skylight at 526 LaGuardia Place. This video is available on Vimeo or the Foundation's films page.
Please join us online Thursday, August 27 from 6-7 pm EDT as Dr. Randall Griffey, Curator of Modern and Contemporary Art at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, discusses the upcoming exhibition Jacob Lawrence: The American Struggle. Opening to the public on August 29 at the Met, this exhibition reunites 26 of the 30 panels Lawrence created for his series "Struggle: From the History of the American People" (1954-56). The works have not been shown together since their creation.
Panel 7: Siege, depicting defeated soldiers after battle during the Revolutionary War, is part of the historic collection at the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation. Gross and Lawrence were both inducted as members of the American Academy of Arts and Letters in 1984.
Organized by the Peabody Essex Museum, the exhibition will travel to multiple cities across the country through 2021. We look forward to you joining us for this conversation followed by Q&A.
Free; RSVP required. To register, please follow the Eventbrite link here.
Join us on Wednesday, January 22 at 6 pm as we welcome Rebecca Shaykin, Associate Curator at the Jewish Museum, for a discussion surrounding the exhibition she organized and curated, "Edith Halpert and the Rise of American Art," on view at The Jewish Museum through February 9, 2020.
The exhibition is the first to look at Edith Halpert, a pioneering female gallerist who championed living American artists in her Downtown Gallery. The exhibition reunites artworks that passed through Halpert's gallery as well as those that were in her personal collection. Although Chaim Gross was not represented by Halpert, they both collected many of the same artists, including Stuart Davis, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Jacob Lawrence, and O. Louis Guglielmi, among others.
Space is limited. Tickets are $15 per person and can be purchased through Eventbrite.
Photo: Edith Halpert at the Downtown Gallery in a photograph for Life magazine in 1952. She is joined by some of the new American artists she was promoting that year: Charles Oscar, Robert Knipschild, Jonah Kinigstein, Wallace Reiss, Carroll Cloar, and Herbert Katzman. Photograph © Estate of Louis Faurer
Free, RSVP Required
The Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation is excited to announce the continuation of “Tactile Transmissions,” a 90-minute Access Program geared toward visitors who are blind or partially sighted. “Tactile Transmissions” encourages participants to touch and create while surrounded by Gross’s sculptures and drawings. The program focuses on the historic workspace, materials, and current tactile exhibition, Teaching Through Touch: Works by Chaim Gross, utilizing verbal description, touch, and making. Visitors will work with our talented educators Nitza Danieli, Pamela Lawton, Annie Leist, and Deborah Lutz.
Each session will have a different theme:
September 10 - "Materials Speak"
October 1 - "Reading Faces"
November 12 - "African Arts and Influences"
December 10 - "Finding Lines"
Due to limited space, please RSVP to Brittany Cassandra by phone 212-529-4906 or email bcassandra@rcgrossfoundation.org. If you would like to bring a guest, please let us know.
Getting Here
The Foundation is located at 526 LaGuardia Place, between Bleecker Street and West Third Street. After passing through a wrought iron gate, please enter through the door at your left. There is a buzzer to the left of the door if needed. The first, second, and third floors are accessible by elevator.
Join us for an evening of poetry on November 18, from 6:30 - 9 pm, featuring poets Maryam Parhizkar, Emily Skillings, and CL Young. Tickets are $10 and can be purchased through Eventbrite here. Space is limited.
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Maryam Ivette Parhizkar is a writer, scholar and author of two chapbooks: Pull: a ballad (The Operating System, 2014) and As For the Future (Portable Press at Yo-Yo Labs, 2016). Her recent writing can be found in The Felt, Omniverse, Social Text Online, Amerarcana/Shuffle Boil, Bone Bouquet, The Academy of American Poets' Poem-A-Day, among other places. Born and raised in southwest Houston by Salvadoran and Iranian immigrant parents, she currently lives in northern New Jersey, and is working on a series of poems on migration and the social and ecological landscape of the Hackensack Meadowlands. She is a 2019 CantoMundo Fellow.
Emily Skillings is the author of the poetry collection Fort Not (The Song Cave, 2017), which Publishers Weekly called a "fabulously eccentric, hypnotic, and hypervigilant debut," as well as two chapbooks, Backchannel (Poor Claudia) and Linnaeus: The 26 Sexual Practices of Plants (No, Dear/ Small Anchor Press). Recent poems can be found/are forthcoming in Poetry, Harper's, Boston Review, Brooklyn Rail, BOMB, Hyperallergic, LitHub, and jubilat. Skillings is a member of the Belladonna* Collaborative, a feminist poetry collective, small press, and event series. She received her MFA from Columbia University, where she was a Creative Writing Teaching Fellow in 2017. She splits her time between Brooklyn and Hudson, NY.
CL Young writes poems and essays. She is the author of a chapbook called What Is Revealed When I Reveal It to You (dancing girl press, 2018), and co-author with Emily Skillings of Rose of No Man's Land, a chaplet from Belladonna*. Her poems have appeared in Lana Turner, the PEN Poetry Series, Pinwheel, Sixth Finch, The Volta, and elsewhere, and essays can be found at Entropy and The Scofield. She holds an MFA from Colorado State University and currently lives in Boise, Idaho, where she runs a reading & workshop series called Sema.
The Foundation is opening its doors from 10am - 6pm on Saturday, October 19 and Sunday, October 20 for Open House New York Weekend. Stop by to visit the home, studio, and art collections of Renee and Chaim Gross. All floors of the building are wheelchair accessible except for the studio space, which is visible from the gallery.
Seating is limited, RSVP Required
Please join us for a screening of “Marcia Marcus: Art in the Family,” a documentary film in progress about painter Marcia Marcus (b. 1928), whose two-person exhibition Double Portrait with Mimi Gross is on view at the Shirley Fiterman Center at BMCC through July 27.
The film features paintings by Marcus, photographs from her extensive archive, interviews with artists and scholars, and an oral history with Marcus from 1975, which was conducted by Paul Cummings for the Smithsonian Institution’s Archives of American Art.
The 70-minute film is produced, directed, and edited by Kate Prendergast. The film includes appearances from Marcia Marcus, Mimi Gross, Marti Edelheit, Red Grooms, Sheila Schwid, Bill Barrell and Terence Barrell, Jennifer Samet, Melissa Rachleff Burtt, Andrew Hottle, with narration by Nello McDaniel.
Following the film, we will have a discussion with Kate Prendergast and scholar Melissa Rachleff Burtt.
Tickets are $15 and can be purchased through Eventbrite here.
Please join us for "Conversations with Conservators: A Benefit to Support Conservation at the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation." The benefit will include a cocktail reception, discussions with conservators, and a chance to spend time at the historic home, studio, and art collections of the Renee & Chaim Gross Foundation.
All proceeds from ticket sales and donations from this event will go directly towards the conservation of one or more works in the Foundation's collection.
Tickets: $50, available here or at the door; please note that space is limited
Meet our speakers:
Lauren Fly, Fly Arts Initiative
Lauren Fly is the founder of the Fly Arts Initiative, a fine art conservation and collections management practice based in New York, NY. With more than 15 years of international experience in paintings conservation and collections care, Lauren works with museums, private collectors, galleries, and other stewards of cultural heritage to preserve and protect their objects. She is passionate about promoting and demystifying conservation to the wider public, and loves talking about little things that can make a big difference.
Donna Page
Donna Page provides conservation and restoration services to collectors, galleries and museums throughout the US, specializing in African wood and terracotta artifacts. She holds an MFA from the University of Wisconsin-Madison; taught at Illinois Wesleyan, Drew University, Queensborough College-CUNY; and worked with the L. Kahan Gallery of African Art (1980-98). She is co-author and co-editor of several books on African art, including Surfaces: Color, Substances and Ritual Applications in African Art (Indiana University Press, 2009).
Christopher Skura, Alvarez Conservation Services
Christopher Skura joined Alvarez in 2007 following a 20 year career as a museum professional and then as a studio assistant to master paintings conservator, Dr. Charles Von Nostitz in New York City. From 1997 - 2010 he owned and operated a gilded surface and period frame restoration studio. Christopher has also been a studio assistant to many artists, including John Chamberlain and Hunt Slonem, and has completed James Bernstein's Mastering Inpainting Workshop at the Ringling Museum of Art. Christopher is a practicing artist and holds degrees in studio art from The Ringling College of Art and Design and liberal arts from New York University.