Edith Isaac-Rose & Bea Kreloff: Partners in Life, Art & Activism – An Illustrated Talk by Emily O’Leary, Associate Curator

Derfner Judaica Museum + The Art Collection will present Edith Isaac-Rose & Bea Kreloff: Partners in Life, Art & Activism, an illustrated talk by Emily O’Leary, Associate Curator, on the life and work of Edith Isaac-Rose (1929–2018) and Bea Kreloff (1925–2016). The talk is hosted by the Hebrew Home at Riverdale by RiverSpring Health Resident LGBT and Allies Group. Isaac-Rose and Kreloff were co-founders of Art Workshop International (Assisi, Italy), painters, teachers, activists and life partners. The talk will take place on Thursday, June 20, at 6:30 p.m. in the Biederman Library at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale, 5901 Palisade Avenue, in the Riverdale neighborhood of the Bronx. This event is free and open to the public. R.S.V.P. 718.581.1596 or art@hebrewhome.org. Photo I.D. required for entrance.

Both artists were aligned with leftist politics of the 1960s, especially radical feminism, the anti-war movement and gay liberation. They met at an exhibition opening in 1981 and two years later Isaac-Rose separated from her husband and moved in with Kreloff. At the time Kreloff had been living since 1970 in Westbeth Artists’ Housing—a converted industrial building in Greenwich Village providing affordable rental housing for artists and their families—with her two sons, Charles and Elliot. Kreloff and Isaac-Rose shared a home as an out lesbian couple for 35 years until Kreloff’s death.

Kreloff studied at and worked for The Brooklyn Museum Art School from 1950 to 1958, where she took classes with the painters Max Beckmann and Rubin Tam. In the 1960s she painted and taught privately, and from 1973 to 1985 she was Art Department Chair at Ethical Culture Fieldston School in Riverdale. She began as a figurative painter whose work became increasingly expressionistic, including portraits in the early 1960s of psychiatric patients, among them her brother who was institutionalized for severe depression. Her work also included images drawn from advertising and photographs depicting women trapped in their surroundings and later portraits of women who played key roles in her life. A painter, printmaker and textile artist, Isaac-Rose graduated from the Art Institute of Chicago in 1951 and moved to New York in 1959. Her work predominantly reflected on the brutalities of war, political corruption and social oppression. Both artists’ work is held in major public and private collections throughout the US, including the Hirshhorn Museum in Washington, D.C.

About Hebrew Home at Riverdale
As a member of the American Alliance of Museums, Hebrew Home at Riverdale by RiverSpring Health is committed to publicly exhibiting its art collection throughout its 32-acre campus, including the Derfner Judaica Museum and a sculpture garden overlooking the Hudson River and Palisades. The Derfner Judaica Museum + The Art Collection provides educational and cultural programming for residents of the Hebrew Home, their families, and the general public from throughout New York City, its surrounding suburbs, and visitors from elsewhere. RiverSpring Health is a nonprofit, non-sectarian geriatric organization serving more than 18,000 older adults in greater New York through its resources and community service programs. Museum hours: Sunday–Thursday, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Art Collection and grounds open daily, 10:30 a.m.–4:30 p.m. Call 718.581.1596 for holiday hours and to schedule group tours, or for further information, visit our website at http://www.riverspringhealth.org/art

This event is part of the Stonewall 50 Consortium programming commemorating 50 years of LGBTQ civil rights history since the Stonewall uprising in 1969.