Cissy Grossman was a curator and teacher of Jewish art for over seventy years. In the 70’s, she was Assistant Curator at the Jewish Museum in New York and in this capacity also contributed manuscripts and other ritual objects to many other museum exhibitions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art.
She was curator of Judaica collections at Temple Emanu-El in the 80’s, senior researcher and consultant at the Museum of Jewish Heritage since the 90’s, and curated many important New York collections and exhibits including collections for Central Synagogue and Hebrew Union College. For over twenty years, she was the curator of Michael and Judy Steinhardt’s Judaica Collection.
Throughout her long career she wrote and published important exhibition and collection catalogs. In 2018, she gifted a portion of her own collection of books and catalogs to the Watson Library of The Metropolitan Museum of Art where they were on exhibit.
She served on the board of directors at the Center for Jewish Art in Jerusalem and the Textile Conservation Workshop in South Salem, New York, was a member of the Curators’ Committee at The American Association of Museums and the Appraiser's Association of America.
In the late 70’s and early 80’s, she was an Art History Lecturer at Rutgers University and George Washington University . She shared her love of objects and the humanity represented through these objects in many talks around the city including the 92nd St. Y. She was able to connect every viewer with people who lived in another time and place through objects created and used in everyday life. She trained generations of Judaica scholars and all her assistants for every collection.
Trained as an artist when she was in her twenties, she and another painter started Promenade Handmade Handbags, designing leather and suede pocketbooks with matching hats and belts that were featured in the windows of B. Altman department store in the late 40’s. She was a lifetime painter of impressionist still lifes, landscapes, portraits and the figure and always had a canvas in progress on her easel. She continued to work, teach and study into her 90’s.
Married to Gene Grossman for 50 years, they lived in Tarrytown where he practiced medicine. Soon after their marriage, they were separated for two years while he served in the navy during World War II. Later in life, she moved to the city to be closer to her children. She was 98 years old when she passed away peacefully at the home of her daughter with whom she’d been living throughout the pandemic. She is survived by her three children, Richard Grossman, Rachel Phillips and Wanda Caine, and five grandchildren, Gigi, Jonah, Mollie, Phoebe and Ella. Many wonderful memories are shared by family including sons-in-law, daughter-in-law, grand-daughter-in-law, nieces, nephews and their children along with those she considered family. She supported and recognized their ambitions and progress and helped them see what was important in life. She was a true matriarch.
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