Art: Great Images for Israel

Sculptor Jacques Lipchitz was born in Lithuania, lived in France, and became a U.S. citizen in 1957. but he had none of these lands in mind when he sat down one day with pen and paper. “I feel good today,” he wrote. “My mind is clear and quiet, and I choose this day to make my last Will. After all. I am almost 70 years old.” He went on to say that “apart from my family, my deep concern is for the Jewish people, saved from Hitler, in Israel.” With that, he bequeathed to Israel an artistic bonanza—300 original plasters from which most of his bronze sculptures have been cast.

The bequest was one that any museum in the world would have been overjoyed to get, but only the new Jerusalem Museum of Art has so persuasive a booster as U.S. Showman Billy Rose. For years curators and directors have been angling for the Lipchitz plasters—so many, in fact, that the great sculptor hardly knew which way to turn. Then one day Lipchitz’ old friend Billy came to call in his capacity as the chairman of the Jerusalem Museum’s art committee. After talking with Billy. Lipchitz suddenly realized that to give his plasters to Israel was “a longstanding dream of mine. My dream as a Jew, and as an artist.”

The Jerusalem Museum of Art is quite a dream in itself. Now being built on top of a sawed-off hill near the Israeli Knesset, it will house not onlv the old Bezalel National Museum, which is the largest general museum in the Middle East, but also the Samuel Bronfman Archaeology Museum, a Shrine of the Book (to ‘hold the Dead Sea Scrolls), and the Billy Rose Art Garden, designed by Sculptor Isamu Noguchi. The Art Garden already has Billy’s own private collection, which Israel finally accepted as a gift last year after deciding that it would not be a violation of Leviticus 26:1 to have graven images around as long as no one bowed down unto them.

Lipchitz’ graven images are among the finest of this century, and Showman Rose was not exaggerating last week when he made his own estimate of their value. “When you think that one bronze reproduction might bring in $15,000, and that here we’ll have 300 of the original plaster models, well. I’d hate to think what the value would be in figures, but it’s astronomical.”