Jerome M. Eisenberg, a leading New York antique dealer who, in the murky world of grave robbers and smugglers, has established himself as a defender against the illegal trade and importation of works. ancient artwork, passed away on July 6, his 92nd birthday, in Manhattan.
His son, Alan, said his death in hospital was due to complications from pneumonia.
Mr. Eisenberg started a mail-order antique coin business with his father when he was 12 years old, and over the years he has sold an estimated 40,000 artifacts – he insists he never knowingly sold them. anything of questionable origin – and have appraised countless other antiquities for prospects. policyholders and insurers. He has testified as an adept witness in numerous lawsuits about the value and provenance of antiquities.
As founding editor of Minerva, an archaeological journal, he challenged the authenticity of several prominent monuments. One is the Phaistos Disk, a clay artifact, 6 inches in diameter and decorated with mysterious symbols, discovered in 1908 in Crete; another is the Serpent Goddess of Knossos, found around the same time and like the Disc, on display in Crete at the Archaeological Museum of Heraklion.
Mr. Eisenberg, a blacksmith expert, wrote in 2008 that the Phaistos Disk and its undeciphered symbols, unrelated to any known writing, had been forged by Luigi Pernier, the archaeologist who said he had discovered it. it was during a excavation at the Palace of Knossos 100 years earlier. His analysis is still being debated.
Often portrayed by the press as the head of the New York antiquities department, Mr. Eisenberg founded the Royal-Athena Gallery in Manhattan, specializing in Classical Greek, Roman and Egyptian art, in 1954, after demobilization. In 1970, he founded the Collector, a natural history gallery with minerals, seashells, fossils, and butterflies. He later expanded Royal-Athena, opening branches in Beverly Hills, California and London.
He retired and closed Royal-Athena in 2020, when he was 90 years old.
Jerome Martin Eisenberg was born on July 6, 1930, in Philadelphia to Gertrude (Roberts) Eisenberg, a teacher, and Samuel Eisenberg, a printer. He grew up in Revere, Mass., and became fascinated with the ancient world during a childhood visit to the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston.
He returned to Philadelphia as a teenager to attend the famous Central High School and live in the city with an uncle. He earned a bachelor’s degree in geology from Boston University and later took graduate courses in art history at Columbia University and Pennsylvania State University.
In 1953, he married Betty Weiner; She passed away in 2018. In addition to her son, he has a daughter, Chelsea Roberts, and two grandchildren.
An archeology student (he studied under a Czech curator Jiri Frelwho was later evicted from the J. Paul Getty Museum in a tax evasion scheme), Mr. Eisenberg specialized in Etruscan bronze and Roman sculpture.
He was the editor of Minerva from its founding in 1990 until 2009. In 1993, he was a founding member of the International Association of Antique Art Traders. In 2012, he was awarded the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity for his contributions to the promotion of Italian culture.
Mr. Eisenberg accused unlicensed excavators of looting antiquities, smuggling them to other countries and selling them on the black market or disguising their origins.
His son said he went so far as to leave the antiquities business for a while and turn to natural history artefacts, because he no longer believed it could be carried out. ethical way. He wrote “A collector’s guide to the world’s seashells” in 1981.
When it comes to getting back into business, says Alan Eisenberg, what means most to him is “doing it ethically and convincing others to do it ethically”. He describes himself in the antiquities category as “a leader for many years in promoting the ethical acquisition of antiquities by museums and collectors”.
But while he prides himself on his ethics, Mr. Eisenberg understands that as different countries change their standards and laws, the definition of ethical behavior can become blurred.
“I have endeavored,” he wrote, “to adhere enthusiastically to all American regulations and international treaties governing objects of cultural importance. Unfortunately, I am both an idealist and a hypocrite, for there is no doubt that I have unwittingly bought many objects legally from galleries and auction houses in the UK, Germany, France and Switzerland used to be exported illegally from their countries”.
