In 1985, Paul Schwartz, and his wife Amy, were shul shopping after moving from Manhattan to Great Neck, New York, when they came across Temple Beth El. Upon entering the synagogue’s vast sanctuary, Schwartz nearly fell over upon seeing what lay behind the bimah, the raised platform where services are led: a white, 55-foot-long, 16-foot-high Louise Nevelson wall sculpture with a built-in Torah ark and an eternal light by Nevelson hanging above it.
“I knew immediately what it was,” Schwartz told ARTnews recently, adding that only days earlier he had read an article about Nevelson by critic Clement Greenberg. “I said, ‘Oh my God, Amy, I could sit in front of this and meditate.’” The Schwartzes have been Beth El members ever since.
The sculpture, The White Flame of the Six Million, was commissioned and donated to the synagogue by real estate developer Wilfred Cohen and his wife, Rose, who were Beth El members. The occasion was the addition of a 1,900-seat sanctuary, designed by Armand Bartos & Associates, onto Beth El’s original 1932, 250-seat chapel, to accommodate a burgeoning congregation. The sculpture’s name is an obvious reference to the Holocaust, and its carved shapes evoke fire and curls of smoke, but also bodies rising into the air. Nevelson made far more black sculptures than white, and the lighter color creates stronger shadows.
Nevelson taught adult-education sculpture classes in the Great Neck school system in the 1950s and was a known figure in the community and beyond. In 1959, she was included in the “16 Americans” exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art alongside Jasper Johns, Robert Rauschenberg, and Frank Stella.
In the mid-1980s, Temple Beth El boasted 1,500 member families and a 500-family waiting list, executive director Stu Botwinick told ARTnews. But due to changing demographics in Great Neck, the synagogue today has dwindled to 400 member families and no longer needs its enormous sanctuary. “It’s a nice-sized congregation, but it’s time to right-size our space,” Botwinick said.
Beth El is in negotiations to sell the entire property and lease back its original chapel for 10 years from the new owners. With nowhere to house or display the Nevelson, the congregation has signed an exclusive contract with Ann Freedman, founder of FreedmanArt and former director of Knoedler Gallery, to sell it. Freedman was recommended to the Beth El board by Schwartz, a former classmate of hers at Washington University in St. Louis.
The Louise Nevelson sculpture “The White Flame of the Six Million,” at Temple Beth El in Great Neck, New York.
Steve Fenn Photography
“This is a work of art that goes beyond a work of art,” Freedman said. “It was handmade by the artist. People have prayed in front of it for over 50 years. When do you get to buy a major work out of a private chapel?”
The path to the Nevelson sale began almost two and a half years ago, when Beth El’s rabbis encouraged the board to create a strategic plan forward, board president Jordana Levine told ARTnews. “We wanted to understand how we could thrive, not just survive,” she said. A decision was reached to sell the property, which meant the Nevelson had to go as well.
The congregation first contacted Pace Gallery, Nevelson’s longtime dealer. “They wouldn’t sell it for us,” said congregant Stephen Limmer, a former board president who was involved in the effort. “But they told us not to break it up.” It is unclear whether an ongoing lawsuit by the Beloff estate involving the gallery and Pace founder Arne Glimcher—who told Sotheby’s that a Nevelson it was about to auction was not authentic—played any part in Pace’s refusal. The gallery did not respond to requests for comment.
Last May, Beth El contracted with Sotheby’s to sell the Nevelson privately, but by November the synagogue ended the arrangement. “They weren’t pushing it,” Limmer said. “They told us the timing was better in the fall. We decided to take it away from Sotheby’s.”
That’s when Freedman was brought in by Schwartz. “We had some second thoughts when we saw the movie,” Limmer said, referring to Made You Look: A True Story About Fake Art, the 2020 documentary about the sale of forged art by Knoedler from 1994 to 2011, when Freedman ran it. The scandal forced Knoedler to close after 165 years in business. “But she impressed us when she came down,” Limmer added. “She had researched it. We really liked her.”
Records of how much Nevelson was paid for the sculpture—one of the largest she ever made—have not been located; neither the congregation nor Maria Nevelson, Louise’s granddaughter and the founder of her foundation, has been able to find them. An article about the dedication of the piece ran in The New York Times on September 20, 1970, stating that it was “valued at more than $100,000.” In 2022, a six-foot-wide model of The White Flame sold at Sotheby’s for $327,600. Freedman said the full-scale work is currently valued at about $2.5 million.
The work’s dimensions are a limitation, but Freedman said its lack of overt Biblical iconography makes it suitable for a secular institution. “It’s classic Nevelson,” she said, noting that she is reaching out to institutions, including museums and foundations. “The sculpture needs a fresh coat of white paint but is in good structural condition. A benefactor could buy it and give it to any nonprofit.”
The congregation hopes the sculpture stays in New York but is open to any location. The clock is ticking—the real estate deal could be completed as early as this summer, at which point the Nevelson will have to go.
A detail look at the Louise Nevelson sculpture “The White Flame of the Six Million,” at Temple Beth El in Great Neck, New York.
Steve Fenn Photography
Freedman never met Nevelson, who was born in what is now Ukraine in 1899 and died in New York in 1988, but she has researched her life. “She was this ‘nothing can stop me’ woman with perseverance,” Freedman said. Interest in Nevelson’s work has increased over the years, and her work can be found in the collections of 250 museums, according to Maria Nevelson. She has three museum shows this year—at the Centre Pompidou-Metz, the Mobile Museum of Art in Alabama, and the Chrysler Museum of Art in Virginia, the last a co-exhibition with artist Esphyr Slobodkina that began at the Arkansas Museum of Fine Arts and will travel to the New Britain Museum of American Art in Connecticut.
The White Flame was the first but not the only sculpture Nevelson made for a house of worship. She created Sky Covenant for Temple Israel in Boston in 1973 and an immersive environment in the Chapel of the Good Shepherd (a.k.a. Nevelson’s Chapel) at St. Peter’s Lutheran Church in New York in 1977.
Psychoanalyst and art historian Laurie Wilson, author of Louise Nevelson: Light and Shadow (Thames & Hudson, 2016), said The White Flame inspired Nevelson to do more work for religious institutions. “She loved large,” Wilson said. “She would say, ‘If you want it bigger, I’m the person to make it bigger.’”
Wilson hopes the Beth El sculpture goes to an institution with a grateful audience. “Nevelson wanted her work to be seen by a public that appreciates it,” she said.
Maria Nevelson said making art was her grandmother’s true religious practice. “She used it to get to a higher level of spiritual existence,” she said. “She used to say it brings you to a fourth level.”
Botwinick said some congregants feel badly about the sale. “But it will secure the temple for a long time financially,” he added. He pointed to the many programs the synagogue runs, including popular adult-education classes and a film festival. “We have an engaged congregation, and we are investing in our programs and people rather than bricks and mortar,” he said.
Freedman sees her job as ensuring The White Flame has a future. “It’s not just that we have to sell it,” she said. “We have to give it a new life.”
