Eye of the Collector: Works on Paper from the Sigmund R. Balka Collection

On view in the Harnett Museum of Art, from October 21 to December 5, 2010, is Eye of the Collector: Works on Paper from the Sigmund R. Balka Collection. The exhibition features a selection of artworks from the Sigmund R. Balka Collection at the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion Museum in New York. Highlighted are works from artists such as Max Beckmann, Isabel Bishop, Marc Chagall, Lyonel Feininger, Robert Motherwell, Larry Rivers, and Rembrandt van Rijn. The collection includes European and American Jewish artists, as well as Jewish themes in art by other artists, and the exhibition provides a glimpse, both secular and religious, into Jewish life and culture.

Sigmund R. Balka, graduate of Williams College and Harvard Law School, led a distinguished professional career in the Kennedy and Johnson presidential administrations, and held positions of leadership in the Greater New York Metropolitan Food Council, American Corporate Counsel Association and Foundation; and service on the Art Law and General Counsel Committees of the Association of the Bar of the City of New York. He currently serves as Vice President, Public and Cultural Affairs and General Counsel of Krasdale Foods, White Plains, New York. He is also the Director and Chief Operating Officer of the Krasdale Galleries in White Plains and New York City, where he has curated more than 100 exhibitions of modern and contemporary art by international artists.
 
Mr. Balka assembled the collection over a period of five decades, and he has gifted the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion Museum an encyclopedic survey of the major European and American Jewish artists and themes in Jewish art, primarily during the 19th and 20th centuries. The collection of more than 200 works represents the creativity of Jewish artists and reads as a chronological history of Jewish life and experiences over time: scenes of Jewish urban life, the practice of religion, politics, the Depression, artistic responses to the Holocaust, and the work of Jewish women artists.
 
Highlights of the exhibition include Pierrot and Mask, 1920, a lithograph by Max Beckmann (German, 1884-1950); an etching by Isabel Bishop (American, 1902-1988), Three Men on Fourteenth Street, 1927-31; Mère et enfant à la Tour Eiffel (Mother and Child at the Eiffel Tower), 1954, a lithograph by Marc Chagall (Russian, 1887-1985); and an etching, engraving, and dry point by Rembrandt van Rijn (Dutch, 1606-1669), The Flight into Egypt, 1651.
 
The exhibition was organized by the Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion Museum, New York, and curated by Laura Kruger, Curator, Hebrew Union College – Jewish Institute of Religion Museum, New York.  The accompanying book, The Eye of the Collector: the Jewish Vision of Sigmund R. Balka, published by Hebrew Union College, is available for purchase at the University Museums.