Berta O'Hare Margoulies (September 7, 1907 – March 20, 1996) was an American sculptor.

Life

She was born in Lovitz,

Congress Poland Congress Poland, Congress Kingdom of Poland, or Russian Poland, formally known as the Kingdom of Poland, was a polity created in 1815 by the Congress of Vienna as a semi-autonomous Polish state, a successor to Napoleon's Duchy of Warsaw. It w ...

. Her family migrated to Belgium during World War I and from there to the Netherlands and then the United Kingdom and then to the United States where she graduated from

Hunter College Hunter College is a public university in New York City. It is one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York and offers studies in more than one hundred undergraduate and postgraduate fields across five schools. It also admi ...

in 1927. She then began studying sculpture at the Art Students League and from there she moved to

Paris Paris () is the capital and most populous city of France, with an estimated population of 2,165,423 residents in 2019 in an area of more than 105 km² (41 sq mi), making it the 30th most densely populated city in the world in 2020. S ...

where she studied at the Academie Colarossi,

Academie Julian An academy (Attic Greek: Ἀκαδήμεια; Koine Greek Ἀκαδημία) is an institution of secondary or tertiary higher learning (and generally also research or honorary membership). The name traces back to Plato's school of philosophy, f ...

and the Ecole des Beaux-Arts. She had been planning to study with Emile Antoine Bourdelle, but he died before they could meet. She returned to the United States in 1931, and in 1937 was one of the founders of the

Sculptors Guild Sculptors Guild, a society of sculptors who banded together to promote public interest in contemporary sculpture, was founded in 1937. Signatories to the original corporation papers (Sculptors Guild, Inc.) were Sonia Gordon Brown, Berta Margoulie ...

. In 1939, she executed a relief sculpture at the

United States Post Office The United States Postal Service (USPS), also known as the Post Office, U.S. Mail, or Postal Service, is an independent agency of the executive branch of the United States federal government responsible for providing postal service in the U. ...

Canton, New York Canton is an incorporated town in St. Lawrence County, New York. The population was 11,638 at the time of the 2020 census. The town contains two villages: one also named Canton, the other named Rensselaer Falls. The town is named after the gr ...

. ''Note:'' This includes an
''Accompanying seven photographs''
/ref> She also taught at the Finch School in New York and the Roerich Museum. The post office and sculpture was listed on the

National Register of Historic Places The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artistic v ...

in 1988. She was one of 250 sculptors who exhibited in the

3rd Sculpture International 3rd Sculpture International was a 1949 exhibition of contemporary sculpture held inside and outside the Philadelphia Museum of Art, in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, USA. It featured works by 250 sculptors from around the world, and ran from May 15 ...

held at the

Philadelphia Museum of Art The Philadelphia Museum of Art (PMoA) is an art museum originally chartered in 1876 for the Centennial Exposition in Philadelphia. The main museum building was completed in 1928 on Fairmount, a hill located at the northwest end of the Benjamin Fr ...

in the summer of 1949. Throughout her life, she also held various jobs as a translator, research worker, and social worker.

References

1907 births 1996 deaths American women sculptors 20th-century American sculptors Modern sculptors Artists from New York City Hunter College alumni Art Students League of New York alumni Académie Julian alumni American alumni of the École des Beaux-Arts Polish emigrants to the United States 20th-century American women artists Sculptors Guild members Sculptors from New York (state) {{US-sculptor-stub