A collection of Andy Warhol portraits is on view now at The Temple-Tifereth Israel museum thanks to lifelong friends Joel Saltzman and the late Leslie Wolf who grew up together in Northeast Ohio.
The influential pop artist created “Ten Portraits of Jews of the Twentieth Century,” in 1980, spotlighting actress Sarah Bernhardt, Supreme Court Justice, Louis Brandeis, Israeli Prime Minister, Golda Meir, philosopher Martin Buber, writer Gertrude Stein, physicist Albert Einstein, neurologist Sigmund Freud, composer George Gershwin, author Franz Kafka and comedians the Marx Brothers.
In the early 80s, Saltzman, then working in Washington, D.C., received a call from Wolf, who became a college professor in California.
“[Wolf] called me and said, ‘I saw in a gallery they have a complete suite of Warhols, ten portraits ten Jews of the 20th century and they’re beautiful. What do you think? I can’t afford all of them,’ he said. ‘But you want to go in on that and we’ll figure it out?’ And I said, ‘That sounds interesting.’”
Saltzman had a connection in New York City that led him to Warhol’s famous art studio, the Factory, and by combining resources the two purchased printer’s proofs of the series.
Warhol’s art handlers shipped the series to Saltzman who selected five of the portraits to frame and hang in his one-bedroom apartment. Meanwhile Wolf’s five were stored underneath his friend’s bed for years until he returned to Northeast Ohio after falling ill.
“I drove [Wolf’s] five on the Pennsylvania and Ohio Turnpike to Cleveland, and we hung them in his apartment and he enjoyed them very much for he couldn’t travel after that,” Saltzman said. “He enjoyed them very much for maybe 10, 12 years until he passed away.”
After Wolf’s death in 2012, his family wasn’t sure what to do with his five Warhol portraits.
“We didn’t want them to be damaged,” Wolf’s sister, Nancy said. “They were in storage until we could find the right home for them and we just kept waiting and time just kept passing by.”
Fast forward to 2021 and Saltzman was downsizing from his home outside of Washington, D.C. to an apartment in Beachwood.
“I knew that I wasn’t going to have a big enough space to have my five anymore,” Saltzman said. “It’s much better that the public gets to see these.”
Saltzman reached out to an old friend, Sue Braham Koletsky, director of the Temple Museum of Jewish Heritage at the Temple-Tifereth Israel in Beachwood.
“Joel called me out of the clear blue sky,” Koletsky said. “He said, ‘Sue I’m thinking about the Warhols and I think I’d like to donate them to the Temple Museum.’ I was flabbergasted.”
Saltzman approached Leslie’s sisters, and they agreed it was the perfect home for the Warhol portraits.
“I think [Leslie] would be thrilled,” Nancy Wolf said. “And he would be very grateful to Joel for pulling it off.”
For the Temple-Tifereth Israel and its museum, the donation is transformative.
“The moment we’re looking at, that is represented in these portraits is a moment wherein Jews struggled for citizenship, for equality, for acceptance, for dignity, for participation and contribution in a whole range of aspects of life,” the Temple-Tifereth Israel Rabbi Jonathan Cohen said. “This is the time wherein we find Jews on the one hand being integrated into a number of societies and eventually into America…while at the same time we witness the destruction of Jewish life in Europe during the time of the Second World War and the Holocaust.”
“We’re able to study these people,” Koletsky said. “A lot of discussion comes up from these…debating, ‘Well, who would be the 10 famous Jews of 21st century?’”
