Funeral services will be held tomorrow at Temple Shalom in Greenwich, Conn., a memorial service will be held Sept. 16 at the Washington Hebrew Congregation for Joseph Hirshhorn, the wealthy investor and art collector who died here Monday night of a heart attack at the age of 82.
Born in Latvia Aug. 11, 1899, Hirshhorn was the 12th of 13 children. He was brought to the United States at the age of six by his widowed mother with the rest of the family which settled in Brooklyn where he was raised.
Hirshhorn, whose success as a Wall Street investor started when he was only 17, began his art collection during his early Wall Street years. As his collection grew in size and importance, many countries, including Israel, made a bid for it. In 1966, Hirshhorn donated his vast and versatile collection to the United States and helped to pay for the construction of the Hirshhorn Museum and Sculpture Garden which was opened here Oct. 4, 1974.
When the museum opened, it had a collection of more than 6,000 works of art, mainly by American and European artists from the late 19th Century to current modernists. The works represented more than 40 years of collecting by Hirshhorn who was said to be worth more than $100 million, from investments and uranium prospecting, by the time he died.
Reminder: There will be no Bulletin dated September 7 due to Labor Day, a postal holiday.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
