This special display, located in the McGraw Rotunda on the third floor of the Stephen A. Schwarzman Building, showcases the recently completed fourth volume of the Rose Family Seder Books—a series of unique books featuring over sixty years of Passover-themed artwork. An interactive monitor accompanies the display, allowing viewers to explore the fourth volume’s pages for the first time.
The first three volumes of the Books were presented to the Dorot Jewish Division by the Rose family in 2005. Together, they contain works from artists such as New York social realist Jack Levine and New York Review of Books caricaturist David Levine, and they include some of the most prominent American artists of the twentieth century. Many of the contributors were American Jewish artists, often from New York—such as Saul Raskin, Leonard Baskin, and Larry Rivers—and often already famous for depicting Jewish themes. Notable contributors to these volumes also include the New York Spanish expressionist Federico Castellón and the Israeli social realist Naftali Bezem.
Artists utilized materials and techniques that range from a stained-glass window design executed in mylar to several pages of Frank Stella’s sculptural paper puzzle constructions. All four volumes are now part of the Dorot Jewish Division’s holdings.
