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Martin Wright 1930–2018
BORN IN 1930 into the Great Depression, Martin Wright
never took his achievements for granted. A hard worker, he
acquired an education in law and business administration
and went on to specialize in tax law, which led him to a successful
career as an attorney and a certifi ed accountant.
Married to Faith-dorian, an artist who loved and collected
Native American, African, and Oceanic art, Martin became
involved in the acquisition of an art form that at fi rst was not
familiar to him, but, in typical fashion, he strove to acquire
the very best in these fi elds, eventually becoming an enamored
and knowledgeable collector. Following his sense of adventure
and his philosophical interest in art, Martin traveled from
Easter Island to Mali, from Alaska to Bali, and to many other
destinations throughout the world, but,
on principle, his acquisitions were always
made in Europe and in the United States.
Together, he and Faith became infl uential
members of the collection committees of
leading museums, key among them the Israel
Museum, for which Martin worked
tirelessly and voluntarily to strengthen its
holdings of African, Oceanic, and American
Northwest Coast art. Martin became
the Honorary Acting Senior Curator of the
museum’s AOA Department and its galleries
were named for him and Faith-dorian,
anticipating a future in which, with their
help, the Israel Museum would come to be
considered one of the world’s important centers for African
and Oceanic art.
In 1984, prior to the “Art as a Means of Communication”
symposium organized at the Israel Museum in homage to—
and with the participation of—Claude Lévi-Strauss, Martin
wrote, “The State of Israel had always been important to me
and that is why in the spring of 1976, my wife, Faith-dorian,
and I decided to build a collection of primitive art for the Israel
Museum. We committed ourselves to install a gallery devoted
to the art of the Pacifi c Islands and the North American
Indian. This was completed in December of 1980. We then
embarked on the installation of the gallery devoted to African
art, which is scheduled to open in 1984.” This is indeed what
transpired. The galleries named after the Wrights turned into
Martin’s main focus of interest, and he became involved in
the Israel Museum as the AOA Department’s main and most
active donor, contributing both his fi nancial resources and his
time to the expansion of the collection.
For almost forty years, Martin’s commitment to the Israel
Museum led to a long line of exemplary gifts that signifi cantly
strengthened the AOA collection. He never missed an opportunity
to involve other collectors and, with Martin’s help,
many unique and rare individual pieces were gifted over the
years, as were entire collections. These donations came from
the United States, Europe, Asia, and Latin America.
With Martin’s exemplary support and
mentorship, the collection of the Museum’s
AOA Department today numbers
more than 9,300 objects from diverse cultural
traditions and spans four continents
and four millennia. Martin also brought
his good friends to Israel, who, with their
relevant specialties, assisted in building the
department. One of the fi rst was Douglas
Newton, then chair of the Department of
Primitive Art at the Metropolitan Museum
of Art in New York, who advised our museum
on its holdings of African and Oceanic
art, which were then based on three
large collections that had already been
gifted. Similarly, Leon Siroto participated in the design of the
fi rst exhibition of African art. In 1997, Newton, together with
Kate Ezra, were enlisted by Martin to write scholarly articles
for African and Oceanic Art in Jerusalem, the catalog of the
department’s highlights, which was published in 2001.
Martin’s dream was to have the very best of the arts of Africa,
Oceania, and the Americas exhibited in Jerusalem for posterity.
For the curators of the department, his enthusiasm for
the objects he loved and which surrounded him in his home
until his death, and the joy he took in sharing them with the
Israeli and the international public, were, and will always be,
the wind beneath our wings.
Dorit Shafi r