Not All Who Wander Israel
for Art are Lost
MATT SILVER | JE STAFF
Robert Weisman sold, donated or loaned 25 pieces by Nathan Hilu that became part of the Temple Judea Museum’s exhibition “Hilu through the
Eyes of a Collector.”
Photos courtesy of Rita Poley
“O h my God,” Judith Weisman said, partly with mild
irritation but mostly good-humored resignation. “Th ere
is no more room in this house for any more art.”
She knows her husband of 50 years well enough to know that
any moratorium on art acquisitions won’t last long. And as an
amateur artist herself — specializing in mosaics — she doesn’t
really mind. But in quarantine, one tends to notice the walls
getting closer.

“She’d be fi ne if I were to sell some ... and not overwhelm the
house,” said Robert Weisman, a former Macy’s executive who
hasn’t hung any paintings on the ceiling ... yet. “I literally have
paintings in closets right now.”
Weisman has experience selling valuable inventory in bulk.

“At one point, I was in charge of (Macy’s) fur division — you
know, the one the animal rights people don’t like,” he joked.

“When (the division) fi led for bankruptcy, I was in charge of
taking it out of business and selling off the entire fur inventory.”
Th ough he loved the 25 years he spent working for Macy’s,
those furs were just merchandise. Th ere is much more meaning
to be derived from his collection of Jewish art, which comprises
10 MAY 14, 2020
some 60-or-so paintings by Jewish artists both well-known and
not and several hundred objets d’art, including a vast collection
of Judaica paperweights that Weisman suspects to be among the
largest anywhere.

Not conventionally observant, Weisman doesn’t daven oft en;
over the past 50 years, he’s been to Israel on art-hunting expe-
ditions more regularly than he’s been to his neighborhood shul
— though both his daughters became b’not mitzvah at Reform
Congregation Keneseth Israel in Elkins Park, and one was
confi rmed there.

“Th e last time I walked into the synagogue, our friend, the
assistant rabbi, was standing there,” Weisman said of the rabbi
at KI who’d offi ciated his daughters’ baby namings and bat
mitzvahs. “He was so shocked to see me there, he looked around
and said ‘the pillars are going to come crumbling down.’”
Weisman’s connection to Judaism manifests itself diff erently;
it’s a connection he feels most acutely when he’s wandering. In
Israel. By himself.

“I always go myself,” he said; his wife’s joined him just once in
50 years. “I love to wander, and I’ve wandered in and out of art
THE GOOD LIFE
JEWISHEXPONENT.COM



Robert Weisman’s come to love Chris Riggs’ “Ahava” (love) so much he’s
given it prime real estate above his mantle.

Courtesy of Robert Weisman
galleries all my life over there.”
He’s visited around two dozen times since volunteering as
a teenager to work on a kibbutz shortly after the Six-Day War.

Weisman’s sister Helen has lived in Israel for the past 40 years, so
he’ll routinely spend a couple days with her, too.

But Weisman’s version of Shabbat — where he rejuvenates and
communes with something greater — is spent (mostly) alone,
connecting and reconnecting to Israel. He particularly likes
desultory strolls through Mea Shearim, the old haredi neighbor-
hood in Jerusalem, or simply observing religious pilgrims, both
Jewish and not, in Jerusalem’s Old City, looking for the stories he
wants his collection to reflect.

“I’m fascinated, for instance, with the Church of the Holy
Sepulchre. To me, that’s one of the nicest places I’ve ever seen,” he
said. “I’ll sit there and watch for hours the people coming in who
kiss the slab of granite where supposedly Jesus was taken down
off the cross. I’m fascinated by it. And then I’ll wander the Old
City looking for artwork.”
Weisman’s been buying Jewish art in Israel for so long, many
of the gallery owners have come to know who he is and what he
likes. “They tip me off when something they think I’ll like is coming
up,” said Weisman, who’s built relationships with art dealers
both in Israel and in the United States. “They’ve come to under-
stand my tastes. I like brightness, pieces that tell stories.”
He also likes pieces that hit on more than one note but don’t
play out of key. He’s excited by Jewish artists who subvert the
expectation that Jewish art must be solemn and earnest all the
time. And he’s attracted to the experimental and avant-garde
insofar as it’s tethered to the traditions that make Jewish art
Jewish — a nod to the biblical, a reverence for the sanctity of
Jewish ritual.

“As a collector, his taste is very eclectic,” said Rita Poley,
director and curator of the Temple Judea Museum at KI. “It
runs the gamut from the formalism of (Israeli artist) Menashe
Kadishman to the outsider art of the late Nathan Hilu, and from
See Art, Page 12
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MAY 14, 2020
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