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Helène Aylon
Through her art, Helène Aylon explored the intersectionality among her feminism, the Orthodox Judaism of her upbringing, and her place in a war-torn world. Married to an Orthodox rabbi at 18 and...
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Ruth Weisberg
Ruth Weisberg’s art helped bring the Reform Movement’s Open Door Haggadah to life with inclusive, feminist imagery. Weisberg studied art in Italy and Paris before returning to the US to teach and open...
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Louise Nevelson
Louise Nevelson transformed the concept of sculpture from an object the audience walks around to a space the audience can enter into. Nevelson studied modernist and cubist styles with painter Hans...
View ArticleHannah Wilke
Hannah Wilke used her art to transform perceptions of the vagina, the nude female form, and her own cancer-ridden body. Wilke’s first formal pieces in the 1960s were shapes folded like fortune cookies...
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Sarah Bernhardt
Hailed as “the Divine Sarah” and celebrated around the world for her acting talents, Sarah Bernhardt lived as vivid a life as any character she portrayed onstage. Bernhardt debuted in the title role of...
View ArticleKatherine M. Cohen
Defying biblical prohibitions against graven images, Katherine M. Cohen created sculptures that explored Jewish themes and earned respect in both American and European circles. Cohen studied at the...
View ArticleSylvia Goulston Dreyfus
Sylvia Goulston Dreyfus worked to improve Boston both through community activism and through her support of art and music. Dreyfus graduated Wellesley in 1914 and supported the college throughout her...
View ArticleTemima Gezari
Temima Gezari made a lasting impact on Jewish education through her vivid artwork and illustrations of children’s books as well as her many years of teaching pedagogy. Gezari earned degrees from the...
View ArticleMary Frank
Mary Frank’s love of dance informed her compelling sculptures and paintings, with their focus on the human body in motion. Frank studied dance with the famed Martha Graham from 1945 until 1950 when...
View ArticleEva Hesse
Eva Hesse’s innovative sculptures and installations were respected throughout the art world for their dichotomies of lightness and weight, order and chaos, and mechanical and organic forms. Hesse and...
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Rose Kohler
A celebrated artist and a gifted educator, Rose Kohler wrote extensively on the power of art to influence emotion and ideology for good or ill. Rose Kohler studied painting and sculpture at Hunter,...
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Birth of sculptor Louise Nevelson
Louise Nevelson's sculpture Atmosphere and Environment X, 1969. Public domain.Louise Nevelson and her granddaughter, the artist Neith Nevelson, in 1965. This photo is in the public domain.September...
View ArticleLillian Nassau
Antique dealer Lillian Nassau rekindled the public’s enthusiasm for art deco and art nouveau at a time when Tiffany lamps were being destroyed for their bronze. Nassau studied journalism at Columbia...
View ArticleVirginia Morris Pollak
Virginia Morris Pollak’s artistic career and her longtime community service collided in WWII when she used her deep understanding of clay, plaster, and metal to revolutionize reconstructive surgery for...
View ArticleColette Roberts
Colette Roberts helped shape our understanding of modern art both through her art criticism and through her unconventional teaching methods, bringing students into artists’ studios to talk with them...
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Miriam Schapiro
Miriam Schapiro helped pioneer the feminist art movement, both through her own pushing of creative boundaries and by creating opportunities for other women artists. Schapiro attended weekend classes at...
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Ziva Amishai-Maisels
As an art historian and curator for Yad Vashem, Ziva Amishai-Maisels became known for her insights into the impact of the Holocaust on modern art. Amishai-Maisels earned a BA in art history from...
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Tatjana Barbakoff
The daughter of a Chinese mother and a Russian Jewish father, Tatjana Barbakoff used her mixed heritage as inspiration for stunning and innovative dance performances. Born Cilly Edelberg, Barbakoff...
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War memorial by Bashka Paeff dedicated in Kittery, Maine
Sculptor Bashka Paeff at work in her studio. (Wikimedia Commons.)May 31, 1926This Week in History: On May 31, 1926, the town of Kittery, Maine dedicated an unusual war memorial by Bashka Paeff. Steve...
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