Bentonville : Museum purchases Colonial artworks
Posted on Saturday, April 7, 2007
Moses Raphael Levy brought his family to the United States from Germany in the early 1700 s. Less than two decades later, three generations of the family sat for six family portraits.
Those paintings now belong to the Crystal Bridges Museum of American Art, the planned Bentonville museum that announced Friday it privately bought from an undisclosed seller all six Gerardus Duyckinck pieces. Duyckinck was an American Colonial-era artist whose work is on display at Washington’s National Gallery of Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art.
The portraits, completed between 1720 and 1735, will be sent in pairs to The Jewish Museum in New York beginning this month and remain on exhibit there through June 2009, according to a Crystal Bridges news release.
Crystal Bridges expects to open in 2009, at which time all six paintings will be returned to Bentonville.
The paintings represent the beginnings of Jewish Colonial life in America and the changing demographics in Northwest Arkansas, said a Bentonville rabbi.
“Here we are in Bentonville and Rogers, and there are Jews here,” said Rabbi Jack Zanerhaft of Congregation Etz Chaim, a Bentonville synagogue. “Art is reflecting what’s happening in the streets.” The Levy-Franks family began their American life in New Amsterdam, the island now known as Manhattan.
Levy, his wife, Grace Mears Levy, their daughter Abigaill Franks, her husband, Jacob, and five of their children are depicted in the paintings. For Jewish-American families during the Colonial era, portraits represented their new American identity, the release states.
“There are very few portraits from that era that have survived, period,” Zanerhaft said.
Zanerhaft and Crystal Bridges Executive Director Bob Workman said the pieces will further educate the region about the diversity of America and help area residents recognize the changing nature of Northwest Arkansas.
“We’re all immigrants,” Zanerhaft said. “These pieces can act as a springboard for mutual understanding in the world of art.” There were 2, 193 Benton County residents affiliated with religions other than Evangelical Protestant, Protestant, Orthodox Christian or Catholic in 2000, according to the Association of Religion Data Archives. Those 2, 193 people could be affiliated with any of 12 religions, including Buddhism, Judaism and Islam.
Etz Chaim began in 2004 with 12 families. Six months later, the group grew to 32 families and bought a former church in Bentonville. It is the only synagogue in Benton County, according to the synagogue’s Web site, www. etzchaimnwa. org. Northwest Arkansas has other Jewish congregations.
The museum bought the portraits privately, Workman said, and will keep them as part of Crystal Bridges’ permanent collection. He did not say how much the museum paid for the works. Initial dirt work has begun on a 100-acre site northeast of the Bentonville square planned for the museum. Engineering plans are expected to be submitted to the city in two parts this summer, he said.
To contact this reporter: lboch@arkansasonline. com
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