Proud moment for the Jewish Art Salon: 24 of our talented members are featured among these trailblazers! 
“Heritage: Jewish Artists in America since 1900” by Matthew Baigell (Syracuse University Press) traces a century of artistic genius, from Mark Rothko’s ethereal abstractions to Max Weber’s bold modernism, rooted in Eastern European immigrant dreams, moral fire, and unyielding cultural threads. It redefines American art history by centering Jewish voices that refused to fade into the background.
If you’re passionate about where heritage meets innovation, get your copy and join the conversation.
Buy it here: https://press.syr.edu/supressbooks/8639/heritage/ or on Amazon
Mentioned: TheJewish Art Salon, our founding director Yona Verwer, founding members Helene Aylon (OBM), Siona Benjamin, Richard McBee, and Joel Silverstein, as well as artists Hannah Altman, Carol Buchman, Lynne Cassouto, Alan Falk, Alan Hobscheid, Ellen Holtzblatt, Tobi Kahn, Robert Kirschbaum, Jacqueline Kott-Wolle, Lenore Mizrachi-Cohen, Mark Podwal Archie Rand, Janet Shaffer (OBM), Deborah Ugoretz, David Wander, Ruth Weisberg, and Advisor Ori Z. Soltes.
Shout-out to organizations we proudly share members with: Havurah (NY)· Jewish Artists Initiative (SoCal) · Jewish Artists Initiative (Chicago).
Matthew Baigell is professor emeritus in the Department of Art History at Rutgers University. He is the author, editor, and coeditor of over twenty books on American and Jewish American art. His most recent book is Jewish Identity in American Art: A Golden Age since the 1970s.
Art on cover: “Genesis” by Joel Silverstein.
As millions of Jews immigrated to the United States from Eastern Europe starting in the 1870s, they brought with them not only their religious heritage but also a definitive idea of the place and value of art and aesthetics in society. These ideas, motivated by local customs, morality, and political and social interests, are clear in the work of twentieth-century Jewish artists such as Mark Rothko, Leon Israel, Max Weber, Saul Bernstein, and more.
In Heritage: Jewish Artists in America since 1900,Matthew Baigell situates these artists in a uniquely Jewish context. Starting from the shared values and references that informed generations of work, Baigell explores a century of progress through that specific lens. Placing these artists in a focused and continuous history of their own, Baigell shows how Jewish art in America has been informed by national and political trends, how first-generation Jewish artists responded to the works of their predecessors and images from a world away, and how contemporary artists reckon with modern Judaism.
A pioneering effort to isolate a Jewish art stream all its own, Heritage challenges traditional assumptions about modern American art history and the connections between generations of Jewish artists.