| TEL AVIV MUSEUM
Calder Coming To Tel Aviv
For Major Exhibit in 2009 Story and Photos by Tim Boxer  HE director and chief curator of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, Mordechai Omer, is so keen on organizing a major Alexander Calder exhibition that he’s even broken ground for a new building to house the sculptures (as well as a photography center, library and auditorium).
"The new building, a $45 million project, will open in November 2009," Omer said at a gala of the American Friends of the Tel Aviv Museum (AFTAM) at Capitale in lower Manhattan. Alexander S.C. Rower, grandson of the sculptor and director of the Calder Foundation, said the Calder exhibition will include works that have never been shown before. He urged the 270 dinner guests to cough up funds for completion of the new building – "otherwise "I suppose we will have to keep all the Calders in New York." His mother, Mary Calder Rower, the sculptor’s daughter, nodded in agreement. That spurred the most ardent art lovers in the audience to add to the building campaign by buying everything in the live auction. The total amount raised for the museum this evening was $500,000. Credit such philanthropists as Isabelle Black, Donna and Stanley Batkin, Michaela and Leon Constantiner, Amalia Dayan and Adam Lindemann, Elsa Greifinger, Anita Kahn, Sherry and Joel Mallin, Dina Recanati, Gillian and Simon Salama-Caro, and Dr. Stewart Yunis and his wife Victoria Schneps, publisher of the Queens Courier. AFTAM chairman Steven P. Schwartz presented a patron of the arts award to Livia and Marc Straus, founders of the Hudson Valley Center for Contemporary Art, and an outstanding service award to Tamar Ettinger Rudich, vice chair of the AFTAM executive board. Among those applauding were Christopher Rothko, son of the artist Mark Rothko, and Bella Mayer, granddaughter of Marc Chagall. |
