The Sassoons at The Jewish Museum: From Opium to Art

Some families collect art. The Sassoons collected empires, and then art to forget them. In the spring of 2023, The Jewish Museum in New York told their story in more than 120 works.

The Sassoons ran from March 3 to August 13, 2023, curated by Claudia Nahson and Esther da Costa Meyer. It was a dazzling show, and an uncomfortable one. That is exactly why it stayed with me.

From Baghdad to Bombay

The story begins in the early 1830s. David Sassoon, the patriarch, left Baghdad as persecution of its Jewish community grew, and settled in Bombay, today Mumbai. He started in cotton. Then came opium.

His sons opened offices in Shanghai, Hong Kong and London. Within two generations, a refugee family had become one of the richest in the world, and the exhibition did not hide where the money came from.

The Collector’s Eye

This is where the designer in me took over. Hebrew manuscripts from as early as the 12th century, illuminated like jewelry. Chinese ivories carved so finely they look like lace. Silver Judaica, Gainsborough, Corot, and portraits of the family by John Singer Sargent.

Every room felt like a different house: Baghdad, Bombay, Shanghai, Mayfair. The exhibition design, by Leslie Gill Architect, let each world keep its own color and its own light.

The English Sassoons

In England, the family moved from trade to taste. Philip Sassoon, a Member of Parliament, filled Park Lane, Trent Park and Port Lympne with art and gardens and the most fashionable guests of the 1920s. His cousin Siegfried Sassoon wrote poetry in the trenches, and his war journals, with his famous anti-war statement, were on view.

What I Take Home

Beauty and history are never simple. A great collection tells you who people wanted to be, and also what it cost. As a designer, I love rooms that hold both: the treasure, and the truth.

Exhibition: The Sassoons, March 3 – August 13, 2023

Museum: The Jewish Museum, New York

Curators: Claudia Nahson, Esther da Costa Meyer

Exhibition design: Leslie Gill Architect