Armand Bartos
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Armand Phillip Bartos (1910 – December 29, 2005) was an American architect and philanthropist. Though active as a philanthropist, Bartos became primarily known as the co-designer of
Shrine of the Book The Shrine of the Book ( he, היכל הספר, ''Heikhal HaSefer'') is a wing of the Israel Museum in the Givat Ram neighborhood of Jerusalem that houses the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Aleppo Codex, among others. History The building was construc ...
that houses the
Dead Sea Scrolls The Dead Sea Scrolls (also the Qumran Caves Scrolls) are ancient Jewish and Hebrew religious manuscripts discovered between 1946 and 1956 at the Qumran Caves in what was then Mandatory Palestine, near Ein Feshkha in the West Bank, on the ...
in western Jerusalem. Bartos's various and diverse activities, primarily not architecturally focused, included service as the chairperson emeritus of the
SculptureCenter SculptureCenter is a not-for-profit, contemporary art museum located in Long Island City, Queens, New York City. It was founded in 1928 as "The Clay Club" by Dorothea Denslow. In 2013, SculptureCentre attracted around 13,000 visitors. History Fo ...
,
Long Island City, Queens Long Island City (LIC) is a residential and commercial neighborhood on the extreme western tip of Queens, a borough in New York City. It is bordered by Astoria to the north; the East River to the west; New Calvary Cemetery in Sunnyside to the ...
, New York.


Education

In 1934, Bartos received a bachelor's degree in architecture from the
University of Pennsylvania The University of Pennsylvania (also known as Penn or UPenn) is a private research university in Philadelphia. It is the fourth-oldest institution of higher education in the United States and is ranked among the highest-regarded universitie ...
and, in 1935, a master's degree in architecture from the
Massachusetts Institute of Technology The Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) is a private land-grant research university in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Established in 1861, MIT has played a key role in the development of modern technology and science, and is one of the ...
(MIT).


Family

He divorced his first wife to Martha (née Voice Bartos) and subsequently was married to heiress Celeste (née Gottesman, 1913–2013), who had in 1935 married Jerome John Altman. The Bartoses became generous philanthropists, concentrating on culture, particularly twentieth-century art of which they were avid collectors, filling their
Park Avenue Park Avenue is a wide New York City boulevard which carries north and southbound traffic in the boroughs of Manhattan and the Bronx. For most of the road's length in Manhattan, it runs parallel to Madison Avenue to the west and Lexington Av ...
apartment in New York City. Celeste became fabulously wealthy as a result of inheriting the estate of her father,
Samuel Gottesman David Samuel Gottesman (February 22, 1884 – April 21, 1956) was a Hungarian-born, American pulp-paper merchant, financier and philanthropist. He was generally known as Samuel Gottesman or D. Samuel Gottesman. Biography He was born to a Jewish ...
(1885–1956), a Hungarian émigré who had become a pulp-paper merchant and financier. With Celeste, Bartos had a son, Adam, and, from his first marriage, had sons, Armand Jr. and Michael, and daughter Mary Bartos. Through his marriage to Celeste, his stepdaughter was Jenifer Altman (1941–1991), also a philanthropist and a victim of cancer, and stepson Jonathan Altman. He was the great uncle of physician and film producer, Shoshana R. Ungerleider. Armand P. Bartos died at his home in Manhattan on December 29, 2005. He was 95.


Architecture

From 1957 to 1962, Bartos was an architecture partner of
Frederick John Kiesler Frederick John Kiesler (September 22, 1890 – December 27, 1965) was an Austrian-United States, American architect, theoretician, theater designer, artist and sculptor. Biography Kiesler was born Friedrich Jacob Kiesler in Czernowitz, Austro-H ...
(1890–1965), an odd association considering that Bartos was pragmatic and mild-mannered and Kiesler was unorthodox and cerebral. Nevertheless, Bartos joined Kiesler in minor projects, such as a two-story art gallery in New York's
Carlyle Hotel The Carlyle Hotel, known formally as The Carlyle, A Rosewood Hotel, is a combination luxury apartment hotel located at 35 East 76th Street on the northeast corner of Madison Avenue and East 76th Street, on the Upper East Side of New York City. O ...
as an early realization of Kiesler's "Endless House" concept. "The Struggle for New Forms" was the 1957 inaugural exhibition there. Their highest-profile commission, never to be equaled or surpassed by either of them together or separately, was the
Shrine of the Book The Shrine of the Book ( he, היכל הספר, ''Heikhal HaSefer'') is a wing of the Israel Museum in the Givat Ram neighborhood of Jerusalem that houses the Dead Sea Scrolls and the Aleppo Codex, among others. History The building was construc ...
, completed in 1965 in Jerusalem. It was funded by a foundation established by Samuel Gottesman's family to honor him. It, after all, was to house the scrolls that Gottesman himself had purchased as a gift to the State of Israel. However, numerous Israeli architects were miffed by Bartos's participation due to his being an American and, especially, having been chosen through nepotism, though he was Jewish. Kiesler, also Jewish, was even less acceptable to the Israeli architectural establishment, based on his having never finished his architecture studies in Vienna and having built nothing.Meir Ronnen, "Keepers of the Scrolls," ''
The Jerusalem Post ''The Jerusalem Post'' is a broadsheet newspaper based in Jerusalem, founded in 1932 during the British Mandate of Palestine by Gershon Agron as ''The Palestine Post''. In 1950, it changed its name to ''The Jerusalem Post''. In 2004, the paper ...
'', July 24, 1997
Digital Dead Sea Scrolls: "The Shrine of the Book"
retrieved January 9, 2012
About the structure—cited as the best of 1965 by the
American Institute of Architects The American Institute of Architects (AIA) is a professional organization for architects in the United States. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., the AIA offers education, government advocacy, community redevelopment, and public outreach to su ...
(AIA)—Bartos offered: ''"The scrolls are not visual as a Rembrandt is visual. Only scholars can actually decipher them. It was up to us iesler and meto say something about them. huswe built up an air of mystery"''.Anon., "Endless in Jerusalem", ''
Time Time is the continued sequence of existence and events that occurs in an apparently irreversible succession from the past, through the present, into the future. It is a component quantity of various measurements used to sequence events, ...
'' magazine, April 30, 1965
From 1962, he was the principal partner of Armand Bartos & Associates in New York City. The practice designed Belfer Hall (1968) and a number of other buildings at
Yeshiva University Yeshiva University is a private Orthodox Jewish university with four campuses in New York City."About YU
on the Yeshiva Universi ...
in New York City, Fronczak Hall (1976) at the
State University of New York at Buffalo The State University of New York at Buffalo, commonly called the University at Buffalo (UB) and sometimes called SUNY Buffalo, is a public research university with campuses in Buffalo and Amherst, New York. The university was founded in 1846 ...
/SUNY, and others.


Philanthropy

In the early 1990s at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, the Bartoses gave US$100,000 toward the Rotch Library expansion project in the School of Architecture building and donated $1 million for the establishment of The Celeste and Armand Bartos Visualization Center, a classroom facility completed in 1999. And there have been the Celeste Bartos Forum auditorium and, 2002, the Bartoses paid $8.5 million for the Celeste and Armand Bartos Education Center, both within the New York Public Library. The Bartoses have been generous contributors to the library throughout the years as well as to other institutions, such as
The Museum of Modern Art The Museum of Modern Art (MoMA) is an art museum located in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, on 53rd Street between Fifth and Sixth Avenues. It plays a major role in developing and collecting modern art, and is often identified as one of th ...
, Art Institute of Chicago, and Bartos Institute for the Constructive Engagement of Conflict, in the Montezuma Castle (
Daniel Burnham Daniel Hudson Burnham (September 4, 1846 – June 1, 1912) was an American architect and urban designer. A proponent of the '' Beaux-Arts'' movement, he may have been, "the most successful power broker the American architectural profession has ...
, architect), Montezuma, New Mexico.


References


External links


Shrine of the Book in Israel Museum
{{DEFAULTSORT:Bartos, Armand 1910 births 2005 deaths 20th-century American architects Jewish American philanthropists 20th-century American philanthropists Gottesman family 20th-century American Jews 21st-century American Jews University of Pennsylvania School of Design alumni MIT School of Architecture and Planning alumni