Archives Directory for the History of Collecting in America

Rabinowitz, Louis M. (Louis Mayer), 1887-1957

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role Collector
dates 1887-1957
city New York City
stateNY
other citiesRossane, Lithuania;
sex M
historical notes Louis Mayer Rabinowitz was a manufacturer, founder and owner of L. M. Rabinowitz & Company (hook-and-eye fasteners), a philanthropist, bibliophile and art collector.

The Rabinowitz collection included antiquities, medieval, French, and renaissance paintings. Rabinowitz owned paintings by or attributed to, among others, Jean-Baptiste-Camille Corot (1796–1875), Benjamin West (1738–1820), Filippo Lippi(ca. 1406–1469), Pietro Lorenzetti (Italian, active by 1306, died ca. 1348), Agnolo Bronzino (1503–1572), Tintoretto (1519–1594), Titian (1488–1576), Hieronymus Bosch (1450–1516), Anthony van Dyck (1599–1641), Lucas Cranach (the elder, 1472–1553), Giovanni Battista Tiepolo (1696–1770), Giovanni Domenico Battista Tiepolo (1727–1804), El Greco (1541–1614), and Peter Paul Rubens (1577–1640).

Thirty-three paintings from the collection were given to the Yale University Art Gallery. Rabinowitz endowed the Rabinowitz Fund for Judaica Research and established a chair in Semitic languages and literature also at Yale University.

Rabinowitz gave donated books from his collection to, among others, the New York Public Library, Library of Congress, Yale University Library, and Jewish Theological Seminary. He served as vice president of the Jewish Hospital of Brooklyn (where he also funded the installation of murals), and vice of the American Jewish Historical Society.

In 1951, Rabinowitz gave $60,000 to Columbia University to fund a two-year study of academic freedom and in 1953, in order to fund archaeological explorations in Israel he established the Louis M. Rabinowitz Foundation. He was the chairman of the American Fund for Israel Institutions exhibition committee at the Metropolitan Museum of Art (1953), and served as vice president for the New York Chapter of the America-Israel Society.

In 1910, he married Rose Netter Rabinowitz (1886–1968); they had two children: Victor Rabinowitz (1911–2007: m. Marcia Goldberg in 1935, divorced in 1967; and Joanne Aileen Grant, 1930–2005 in 1977) and Lucille R. Perlman (1914–2016, in 1940 married Samuel Perlman, 1908–1990; they had two sons, Bill and Lee.

decades
of activity
1940-1950
1950-1960
updated 10/31/2024 13:33:22
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Archives/Repository Collection Title Collection Details
Yale University Library
Manuscripts and Archives
Louis Mayer Rabinowitz collection, 1676-1957 see details...
Columbia
Reminiscences of Louis M. Rabinowitz: oral history, 1957. see details...

see also:
E. and A. Silberman Galleries (New York, N.Y.)
Platt, Dan Fellows, 1873-1938