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- Monday August 25, 2014 - January 15, 2015
The Prophetic Quest - Jacob Landau's Massive Stained Glass Installation 1974 - 2014
A Celebration After Forty Years - A Re-Dedication for a New Generation
"Step into My Studio" Said the Artist to the Prophet:
Jacob Landau's Massive Stained Glass, The Prophetic Quest, Forty Years Later - A Consideration by Contemporary Artists
Participating artists: ( List still in formation) Marlene D'Orazio Adler, Jean Burdick, Rhea Dennis, Rob Dennis, Shelly Dinkins, Alvin Gilens, Naomi Godel, E. Sherman Hayman, Bernice Horn, Ricki Lent, Paula Mandel, Arlene Gale Milgram, Robyn Miller, Diana Myers, Susanne Okamoto, Diane Pieri, Mordechai Rosenstein, Danielle Ruttenberg, Sophie Sanders, Ph. D., Karen Shain Schloss, Linda Schwartz, Joan Myerson Shrager, Carol Moore Schulman, Phil Schulman, Stan Singer, Dressler Smith, Elsa Wachs
* Designed by artist Jacob Landau (1934 - 2008) and constructed by the Willet Company, each of the ten windows of "The Prophetic Quest" is over 25 feet tall, five feet wide and weighs over six hundred pounds. The window surface consists of 3000 square feet of glass in over 100 colors. There are 30,000 pieces of hand cut, blown French, German, British and American glass, assembled using techniques never before used together in stained glass fabrication. The windows are found at Reform Congregation Keneseth Israel in the Korn Memorial Sanctuary.
At the time he received the KI commission in 1970, Jacob Landau was a mature artist with work in the collections of the Philadelphia Museum of Art, New York’s Museum of Modern Art and its Metropolitan Museum of Art. He was especially known for his portrayal of the perilous challenges of the 20th century, including the Great Depression, WWII, Hiroshima and the Holocaust.
For this project, Landau, a self-described "Spiritual Humanist", proposed to explore prophetic tradition through two major themes: God’s demand that human beings live justly, and the human struggle to comprehend the roots of evil and suffering. According to Landau, he chose his concept of prophetic thought from a book by Martin Buber called "Prophetic Faith". The windows were eventually termed "The Prophetic Quest".