Collecting artwork and sculpture began sporadically at Temple Beth Zion in the 1890s with the construction of a synagogue at 599 Delaware. These were often decorative works with religious themes that beautified the synagogue environment, and could be defined as both art and Judaica. Much of the collection was lost in the fire of 1961 that destroyed the synagogue at 599 Delaware Avenue.
Soon after the current synagogue was built in the 1960’s, fundraising efforts for the temple produced a small collection, and this became the beginnings of a formal art collection. This was expanded upon by the Temple Beth Zion Sisterhood when art became an independent activity, linked to cultural programming and separate from fundraising.
Buffalo-based artists working in a number of mediums and styles, often with national reputations, emerged as a major collecting focus of the formal art committee in the 1980’s. Some of the artists within the gallery came to Buffalo during the 1960’s and 1970’s as parts of experimental streams that grew from inside and outside of the universities and colleges.
The art collection includes paintings by artists Wolf Kahn and Ben Shahn along with the works of well recognized regional artists ranging from Seymour Drumlevitch, Charles Burchfield and Harvey Breverman, whose painting, Mystery of a Prayer Shawl, in oil on canvas, is featured on this page.
