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Modern Art in the Synagogue, II:
Artist, Architect, and Building Committee Collaborate
- Abstract
In my first article in the December 1955 issue of Commentary, I asserted that in the last few years American synagogues were, “for the first time, beginning to make full use of the related plastic arts for both interior and exterior decoration.”
Not every temple has gone in for full-scale use of all the decorative arts. As a beginning, many of them have modernized their exterior decoration only to the extent of simplifying it. Sometimes such decoration goes but a step beyond the conventional menorah. But you can find modern mosaics and stone carvings in the small temples of towns like Lock Haven and Greensburg, Pennsylvania; and the work of Braverman and Halperin throughout the Middle West contains carvings by Esther Samolar, Frank Jirouch, and Arnold H. Bergier. For Temple Israel in Canton, Ohio, Bergier was asked to prepare four stone panels, and A. Raymond Katz a hammered-brass menorah for a free-standing pylon in the courtyard. (Mr. Katz provided another menorah and a cast-bronze decoration for the Ark in the interior.)
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