Arnold Newman: A Retrospective looks at his photographic portraits from the 1940s to the early 2000s. Throughout his career, Newman photographed many Jewish public figures who have made a significant impact in their respective fields including artists, entertainers, scientists, philosophers and politicians.

Arnold Newman was one of the world’s most prolific, innovative and distinguished portrait photographers. He is considered the “Father of environment portraiture,” a style that places its subjects in a carefully composed setting that captures the essence of their work and personality. Each portrait is captioned with personal anecdotes by Newman on the sitting and its famous subject. Using the camera as his tool, Newman viewed his subjects through heart and mind, the result being a very personal and intimate look.  

Newman photographed for many publications, including Life, Harper’s Bazaar, Look, The New Yorker and Holiday. Early in his career, Newman chose photography as the medium for finding his own direction and self-expression. His images for the Farm Security Administration (FSA) shared the same qualities of immediacy and humanistic sympathy as the photographs of Dorothy Lange and Walker Evans. Newman was given his first solo exhibition at the Philadelphia Museum of Art in 1945, published over 14 books, taught and continued to work until he passed away in 2006.

Portraits in the exhibition:

Yaacov Agam, Shmuel Agnon, Woody Allen, Ehud Barak, Saul Bellow, David Ben-Gurion, Leonard Bernstein, Abe Burrows, Marc Chagall, Gen Moshe Dayan, Abba Eban, Otto Frank, Felix Frankfurter, John Garfield, Chaim Gross, David Halberstam, Isser Harel, Al Hirschfeld, Menashe Kadishman, Louis Kahn, Danny Kaye, Mayor Teddy Kollek, Ibram Lassow, Sen. Herbert Lehman, Carlo Levi, Likud Former Prisoners, David Lilianthal, Jacques Lipchitz, Norman Mailer, Stanley Marcus, Golda Meir, Arthur Miller, Zero Mostel, Louise Nevelson, J. Robert Oppenheimer, Dr. Arno Penzias, Abraham Ribicoff, Jerome Robbins, Baron Edmond de Rothschild, Madame Helena Rubinstein, Sacred Object, Shofar and Jerusalem, Jonas Salk, George Segal, Meyer Shapiro, Yeheil Shemi, Moses & Raphael Soyer, Isaac Stern, Alfred Stieglitz, The Wall, Gen. Ezer Weitzman, Simon Wiesenthal, Rabbi Stephen Wise and Yigael Yadin.