Forward.com

Arts Group Broadens Its Horizons
“I feel like I am in Paris,” said a guest arriving at the West 67th Street high-ceilinged, paintings-filled atelier of artist Leroy Neiman for the March 24 cocktail launch of the Arts Horizon LeRoy Neiman Center. Among the guests were Neil Sedaka, Michael Feinstein, Charles “Chip” Fisher (son of Avery Fisher) and hockey legend Rod Gilbert. Also in attendance was Arts Horizon Chairman Celeste Holm, who was about to celebrate her 91st birthday. (Holm won an Academy Award for her role in the 1947 film “Gentlemen’s Agreement,” based on a novel by Laura Z. Hobson [nee Zametkin] about antisemitism. FYI: Hobson’s father was a founder of the Forverts and was the paper’s first editor, preceding Abraham Cahan. Founded in 1978 by John Devol, Arts Horizon offers access to the arts to 30,000 children annually in schools, hospitals and the community at large. “We use the arts to teach math, science and social studies,” Devol said. Standing in front of his work-in-progress painting of a tiger, a mustachioed Neiman, who helped fund the center, joshed: “Nice looking group of people here. Art is an enjoyable process. The only difficult part of it is making a living.”
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Students Remember Holocaust“I’m the man who accompanied Janice to New York,” joshed Israel’s United Nations ambassador, Dan Gillerman, addressing the guests at the Intimate Lunch he and his wife hosted March 13 at their Fifth Avenue residence. “When I took the job five years ago, I was told I’d be hated every day I walked the halls of the United Nations. I walk with my head up high! I represent a country far better than most. A country that is a beacon of excellence not only for the region but the rest of the world, that makes the desert bloom and broken limbs move.… Criticism does not bother me. What bothers me is hypocrisy.” Referring to the recent massacre in Jerusalem in which eight Israeli students were killed, Gillerman noted: “We went to the Security Council and asked for condemnation. After six hours — no condemnation, [they] needed consensus. Fourteen members agreed; one member — Libya — blocked it.”
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Martin Sheen HonoredOn September 24, the Museum of Jewish Heritage-A Living Memorial to the Holocaust will launch a remarkable exhibit: Woman of Letters: Irène Némirovsky and Suite Française, a rare collection of artifacts including more than 100 unpublished family photographs, the manuscript of “Suite Française” and the valise in which Némirovsky’s daughters found it — 50 years after her death in Auschwitz. At the April 8 press conference sponsored jointly by the museum and the Cultural Services of the Embassy of France at its New York headquarters, museum director David Marwell thanked “our hosts, Karen Rispal and members of her staff, Fabrice Gabriel and Amoury Laporte.”
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