A Home For Jewish Art: The Kupferstein Collection,Richard McBee

Mr. Tibor Kupferstein has a dream. He would like to create the first Jewish Art Museum in Brooklyn. That thought is not too farfetched considering that the borough hosts the largest concentration of Jews in the New York metropolitan area. And yet, making his personal collection of Jewish art accessible to the public has been fraught with all kinds of bureaucratic roadblocks and technical snafus that seem determined to turn a beautiful gift into a sad unfulfilled saga. It doesn't seem fair.

Mr. Kupferstein has spent the last 30 years collecting just about anything with a Jewish connection. Born in Hungary, he arrived in the United States in 1948, went to college and after becoming a fashion designer, went into the retail end of the business and sold fur coats. Obviously a man of many talents, he later shifted professions and finally settled into metal work contracting. The diversity and success of his professions subsequently allowed him to indulge in what has become a life-long passion, the collecting of Judaica.

His vast collection takes up every inch of space in a two-story house on a quiet side street in Flatbush (Brooklyn). The house was bought just as space to present his collection. Each room has a general theme and barely holds the massive number of works of art threatening to overflow from room to room. One enters the house directly into the painting salon, long and reasonably well lit, with approximately 150 paintings covering every inch of the walls and stacked neatly in rows down the middle of the floor.

Just off to the left of the entranceway there is the historic Palestinian and Israeli map room, containing some 200 examples of cartography. Through the next doorway we find the home of approximately 50 paintings of rebbes. Another room is jam packed with posters and photographs of Jewish comedians and movie stars. In the halls and stairways we find vintage Jewish Welfare Board posters competing for space with yet more paintings and prints.

Upstairs an entire room is devoted to all kinds of Judaica: menorahs, candlesticks, yadim both silver and wooden, (one specially made for a left-handed person), commemorative and decorative plates, figurines, tourist mementos and knick-knacks. On the walls leading back to the library there are collections of 18th century Biblical prints and innumerable graphic works on yet more Jewish themes. Similarly the library is lined floor to ceiling with books of Jewish interest and a modest collection of seforim. Additionally, in many storage boxes stowed away in nooks and crannies, Mr. Kupferstein has managed to collect a broad selection of original letters, responsa and manuscripts from the 18th to 20th century. He even has a collection of postal stamps that concentrate on Jewish subjects.

With such a vast collection dedicated to the Jewish experience it is hard to single out which works deserve critical appraisal, but a number of items struck my eye. The 22 paintings of the contemporary Brooklyn artist Ibby Kleiner immediately drew my attention with their combination of folk artistry and deft composition. Her approach to shtetl life rises above facile sentimentality, by means of her extremely astute eye for composition and visual metaphor. In Tashlich she has sensitively separated the men and women, emphasizing the women in the foreground and playing on groups of three to create a pleasing rhythm across the image. Interestingly she manages to find at least two males hidden in the women's group, a welcome nod to the complexities of village society.