The pioneering modernist sculptor Jacob Epstein was born on the Lower East Side of New York. He studied art in New York and Paris and settled in London in 1905. Much of his early work, with its explicit sexuality, rough-hewn composition, and indebtedness to non-European sculptural traditions, challenged taboos on what was appropriate for public art and aroused intense controversy. Later he became known for his bronze sculptures of the heads of public figures.
Jacob Epstein, “Morris Rosenfeld,” from Hutchins Hapgood’s The Spirit of the Ghetto: Studies of the Jewish Quarter in New York. Epstein was best-known for his sculptures, but he also created the…
Anna Pavlova (1881–1931) in costume for the solo dance The Dying Swan, a role especially created for her, and which she performed an estimated four thousand times. Born in St. Petersburg and brought…
The kapporet is a short valance hung over the curtain of the Torah ark that first began to appear in Eastern Europe in the late seventeenth century. The griffins and crowns that appear on this kappore…