American Group to Obtain Funds for Israel Museum: Warburg Chairman

Formation of an American organization to obtain funds and works of art for the Israel Museum, with Edward M. M. Warburg as its chairman, was announced here yesterday by Theodore Kollek, Mayor of Jerusalem and chairman of the Museum’s board of governors.

An organizational meeting of the new American Patrons of the Israel Museum was held last night at the home of Arthur B. Krim, president of United Artists. The new group will be part of the America-Israel Cultural Foundation and a list of its board of directors will be announced soon.

Mr. Warburg, who is honorary chairman of the Joint Distribution Committee, said the new group would seek "a solid base of annual membership, augmented by gifts for funds and for pictures." He added he hoped the museum would be known by the quality rather than by the size of its collections.

Mr. Kollek said that more than 900, 000 persons had already visited the museum. He reported that museum officials placed last Friday the cornerstone for an 18th-century French room, a gift of Baron Edmund de Rothschild of France. He also reported that an American collector had recently given $100, 000 to the Museum to buy works by contemporary Israeli artists. The contributor asked that his name be withheld, Mr. Kollek said.

Karl Katz, chief curator of the museum, said that the museum was planning a Photographic Archives of Jewish Art. He cited the Index of Christian Art at Princeton University and the Renaissance archives at the Courtauld and Warburg Institutes in London and said that similarly, "there will be housed in Jerusalem comprehensive archives of Jewish art."

Mr. Kollek said that the museum had started acquiring objects for its Jewish ritual and ceremonial art displays. He mentioned a psalm book from Spain, from before the Spanish expulsion of Jews in 1492, a gift of Jakob Michael, a New York Jewish financier and philanthropist.