An “esoteric playground”? Hear Judy Jaffe Silber talk about her childhood at the Arensberg House.
Left: Judy Jaffe with her parents, Mildred and Sam Jaffe, on the occasion of her graduation from Westlake School for Girls (now Harvard Westlake), Los Angeles; 1953. Right: Judy Jaffe Silber today
A signal frustration while writing Hollywood Arensberg was living with the nagging thought that there were people alive but unknown to us who had met Louise and Walter Arensberg and/or who had seen their collection in situ—flyers, you might say, beneath our radar. Indeed, though we looked for many years, we were only able to find and speak with two people who had been inside the Arensberg home at the time when it was filled with art.
Knowing this, you might easily picture us dropping our jaws in disbelief (while at the same time falling out of our chairs and bumping our heads) when we were introduced to the inimitable Judy Jaffe Silber. The daughter of Hollywood movie producer Sam Jaffe and his wife Mildred, Judy spent her childhood regularly visiting the Arensberg house, crawling amongst the pre-Columbian sculptures and touching—yes, touching—the artworks by Brancusi.
A copy of the exhibition catalogue 20th century Art. Arensberg collection., published by the Art Institute of Chicago in 1949, and inscribed, “To Judy Jaffe with all good wishes from Walter C. Arensberg, Aug 9 – 50”. (Book design by Paul Rand.)
Here’s how we “met” Judy: not long after our book was released to the public, the Philadelphia Museum of Art and the Getty Research Institute jointly hosted a two-part virtual discussion series titled “The Arensbergs in Hollywood.” During the question-and-answer session Judy used the chat feature to let us know that her parents had been close friends with Walter and Louise and that she had been to the home on many occasions! (Did I mention our eyes also popped out of our collective heads?) Soon afterward, Ellen Hoobler and I arranged an interview with Judy over Zoom, which she graciously allowed us to record. (Bill Sherman was otherwise occupied and unfortunately unable to participate.)
Speaking with Judy was magical, for she brought the Arensberg home to life in a way that vibrantly complemented the photographs and other documentation we had collected for the book. During our interview, which took place on March 17, 2021, Judy not only discussed her childhood years playing in what she called the “esoteric playground” of the Arensberg collection, but also her groundbreaking years at Westlake School for Girls (now Harvard Westlake), where she was only the second Jewish student to be admitted. She also discusses her college years at Wellesley, where she studied art history with John McAndrew, and the theft of her parents’ art collection many years later in London. Surprisingly, we also discovered that two exhibitions of ancient American art curated by Ellen had been installed in the Silber gallery at the Walters Art Museum in Baltimore, named for Judy’s brother- and sister-in-law.
Nearly a year later, my co-authors and I are finally able to bring this interview to the public because the Philadelphia Museum of Art Library and Archives has made it a permanent part of its Oral History Collection. We thank Kristen Regina, Arcadia Director of the Library and Archives, and Margaret Huang, Martha Hamilton Morris Archivist, for making the museum acquisition possible and for commissioning the accompanying transcript. Most importantly, we hope you enjoy meeting Judy as much as we did!
— Mark Nelson
