Al Rosenbaum (1926 – April 11, 2009) was an American artist and the co-founder of the

Virginia Holocaust Museum The Virginia Holocaust Museum (VHM) is a public history museum located in Richmond, Virginia, United States. The museum is dedicated to depicting the Holocaust through the personal stories of its victims. History The VHM first opened in 1997, fou ...

in Richmond, Virginia.

Personal life

Rosenbaum was born in

Brooklyn, New York Brooklyn () is a borough of New York City, coextensive with Kings County, in the U.S. state of New York. Kings County is the most populous county in the State of New York, and the second-most densely populated county in the United States, be ...

, in 1926. He and his wife, Sylvia Rosenbaum, moved to Richmond, Virginia in 1960. He earned his living from the janitorial business before his retirement in 1989.

Virginia Holocaust Museum

Rosenbaum co-founded the

with Jay Ipson and Mark Fetter in 1997. It was originally housed in several rooms at the Temple Beth El on Roseneath Road in Richmond between 1997 and 2003. A new, larger location within a renovated

warehouse A warehouse is a building for storing goods. Warehouses are used by manufacturers, importers, exporters, wholesalers, transport businesses, customs, etc. They are usually large plain buildings in industrial parks on the outskirts of cities ...

was dedicated in April 2003. Rosenbaum created the sculpture of a menorah with six candles that currently stands at the museum. Each of the six candles is intended to represent one million Jews who were murdered during the

Holocaust The Holocaust, also known as the Shoah, was the genocide of European Jews during World War II. Between 1941 and 1945, Nazi Germany and its collaborators systematically murdered some six million Jews across German-occupied Europe; ...

. Rosembaum's menorah sculpture also appears in the Virginia Holocaust Museum's official

logo A logo (abbreviation of logotype; ) is a graphic mark, emblem, or symbol used to aid and promote public identification and recognition. It may be of an abstract or figurative design or include the text of the name it represents as in a wo ...

Artist

Rosenbaum's initial interest in

art glass Art glass is a subset of glass art, this latter covering the whole range of art made from glass. Art glass normally refers only to pieces made since the mid-19th century, and typically to those purely made as sculpture or decorative art, with ...

led him to enroll in courses at

Virginia Commonwealth University Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) is a public research university in Richmond, Virginia. VCU was founded in 1838 as the medical department of Hampden–Sydney College, becoming the Medical College of Virginia in 1854. In 1968, the Virginia ...

specifically for

glass blowing Glassblowing is a glassforming technique that involves inflating molten glass into a bubble (or parison) with the aid of a blowpipe (or blow tube). A person who blows glass is called a ''glassblower'', ''glassmith'', or ''gaffer''. A '' lampworke ...

and casting. One of his first major sculptures, a piece which he called ''Shoah'', was constructed of wrought iron meant to remind the viewer of concentration camp gates, glass intended to recall Kristallnacht, a rotating "searchlight," rocks and wood. Rosenbaum’s Shoah is now on permanent display at the Virginia Holocaust Museum. In an interview, Rosembaum said that he had seen a wide range of reactions to this specific sculpture, "from the little ones trying to climb inside to the tears of the elderly." Rosenbaum produced his first one-man art show at the Valentine Museum in 1997. His work had received awards from art shows as far from Virginia as Pennsylvania and Michigan.

Death

Al Rosenbaum died on April 11, 2009, at the age of 82. He was a resident of Richmond, Virginia, at the time.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rosenbaum, Al 1926 births 2009 deaths Museum founders 20th-century American sculptors 20th-century American male artists 20th-century American Jews Artists from Richmond, Virginia Artists from Brooklyn 21st-century American sculptors 21st-century American male artists American male sculptors Sculptors from New York (state) 20th-century American philanthropists 21st-century American Jews