1. Edith Halpert or Edith Gregor Halpert was a pioneering New York City dealer of American modern art and American folk art.
21 Facts About Edith Halpert
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Edith Halpert brought recognition and market success to many avant-garde American artists.
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Over her forty-year career, Halpert showcased such modern art luminaries as Elie Nadelman, Max Weber, Marguerite and William Zorach, Stuart Davis, Peggy Bacon, Charles Sheeler, Marsden Hartley, Yasuo Kuniyoshi, Ben Shahn, Jack Levine, William Steig, Jacob Lawrence, Walter Meigs, Arthur Dove, John Marin, Georgia O'Keeffe, and many others.
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Edith Halpert later expanded her business to include American folk art, and certain nineteenth-century American painters, including Raphaelle Peale, William Michael Harnett, and John Frederick Peto, whom she considered to be precursors to American modernism.
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Shortly after the deadly pogroms of October 1905, Edith Halpert immigrated to New York City in 1906 with her mother and sister.
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Edith Halpert studied drawing under Leon Kroll and Ivan Olinsky at the National Academy of Design and life drawing with George Bridgeman at the Art Students League.
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Edith Halpert was able to attend the National Academy of Design at such a young age because she convinced her instructors that she was actually sixteen.
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Edith Halpert was a member of the Whitney Studio Club and John Weischel's People's Art Guild, a radical artists' cooperative for which she served as treasurer.
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The couple remained in New York City, where Samuel continued to paint while Edith Halpert worked to support them.
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However, Edith Halpert continued to work to support her household while Samuel stayed home to paint.
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Samuel and Edith Halpert divorced in 1930, just before his untimely death caused by streptococci meningitis.
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Flush from bonuses earned in her business dealings, in the fall of 1926, Edith Halpert used that money to open Our Gallery in Manhattan at 113 West 13th Street with her friend Berthe Kroll Goldsmith.
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Regular devotees included Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, and Edith Halpert drew on their relationship to convince Rockefeller to provide support for the Museum of Modern Art and, later, The Downtown Gallery.
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Edith Halpert used marketing and advertising, and worked to get her artists included in museums and public collections to increase their exposure.
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Edith Halpert hosted exchange exhibitions with the Boris Mirski Gallery, The Downtown Gallery's similarly avant-garde Boston counterpart.
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Edith Halpert worked to attract artists formerly represented by Alfred Stieglitz who died in 1946.
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Edith Halpert took on artists' estates, including one from former Stieglitz artist Arthur Dove.
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Not long after, Edith Halpert exhibited Jacob Lawrence's Migration Series, a 60-panel memorial to The Great Migration, which is owned jointly by MOMA and Washington DC's Phillips Collection.
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Edith Halpert served as organizer and director of the First Municipal Exhibition of American Art, Atlantic City, New Jersey, in 1929.
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Edith Halpert served as curator of the art section of the American National Exhibition, sponsored by the United States Information Agency and the US Department of Commerce; she traveled to the Soviet Union with the exhibition, installed the show, and gave daily gallery talks in Russian.
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In recognition of her dedication to the arts, Edith Halpert received the Art in America Award in 1959, a USIA Citation for Distinguished Service in 1960, and the First Annual International Silver Prize from the University of Connecticut for "distinguished contribution to the arts" in 1968.