Jerome M. Eisenberg, a major antique dealer in New York, who has become a guardian of the illegal import and sale of ancient art in the dark world of tomb raiders and smugglers, is his 92nd birthday. He died in Manhattan on July 6th.
His son, Alain, said his death in the hospital was caused by complications from pneumonia.
At the age of 12, Eisenberg started a mail-order ancient coin business with his father, selling an estimated 40,000 ancient relics over the years. He claimed that he had never deliberately sold anything of suspected origin, and evaluated countless people for the future. Buyers and insurance assessors. He testified as an expert witness in numerous proceedings regarding the value and source of the relic.
As the founding editor of the archaeological magazine Minerva, he challenged the credibility of some prominent relics. One was the Phaistos Disc, a 6-inch diameter clay craft adorned with a mysterious symbol, discovered on Crete in 1908. The other was the goddess of the snake of Knossos, which was discovered at about the same time and was exhibited on the island of Crete in the Heraklion Archaeological Museum, as well as the disc.
Forgery expert Luigi Pernier said in 2008 that the Phaistos disc and its undeciphered symbols were found in the bargains of the Knossos palace, regardless of the known letters. It is written that it was forged by. 100 years ago. His analysis is still under discussion.
Eisenberg was often featured in the media as the Dean of the antique dealership in New York, and after being dismissed from the Army in 1954, he founded the Royal Athena Gallery in Manhattan, specializing in Greek, Roman and Egyptian classical art. In 1970, he founded a natural history gallery and collector’s cabinet displaying minerals, shells, fossils and butterflies. He later expanded Royal Athena to open branches in Beverly Hills, California and London.
He retired and closed Royal Athena in 2020 at the age of 90.
Jerome Martin Eisenberg was born on July 6, 1930 in Philadelphia to teacher Gertrude (Roberts) Eisenberg and printer Samuel Eisenberg. He grew up in Libya, Massachusetts and fell in love with the ancient world during his childhood visit to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.
He returned to Philadelphia as a teenager to attend a prestigious central high school and lived in the city with his uncle. He earned a bachelor’s degree in geology from Boston University and later took a graduate course in art history at Columbia University and Pennsylvania State University.
In 1953 he married Betty Weiner. She died in 2018. In addition to his son, he is surviving by his daughter Chelsea Roberts and two grandchildren.
An archaeological student (he studied under Czech curator Zirifrel, who was later dismissed from the J. Paul Getty Museum on a tax evasion plan), Eisenberg specialized in Etruscan bronze and Roman sculpture.
He was the editor of Minerva from its founding in 1990 to 2009. In 1993 he was a founding member of the International Association of Dealers of Ancient Art. In 2012, he was awarded the Order of the Star of Italian Solidarity for his contribution to the promotion of Italian culture.
Eisenberg accused unlicensed excavators of plundering ancient relics, smuggling them to other countries, selling them in the black market, and disguising their provenance.
He went away from the antique dealer for a while to look at the relics of natural history, his son said. He no longer believed it could be done ethically. He wrote “A Collector’s Guide to Seashells in the World” in 1981.
When he returned to business, Alan Eisenberg said that what was most meaningful to him was “to do it ethically and to convince others to do it ethically.” I did. In his catalog of relics, he states, “a leader of several years in facilitating the ethical acquisition of relics by museums and collectors.”
But while he was proud of his ethics, Eisenberg understands that changes in standards and laws by different countries can obscure the definition of ethical behavior. I did.
“I eagerly sought to comply with all American regulations and international treaties governing culturally important objects,” he writes. Unfortunately, I am an idealist and a hypocrite. There is no doubt that you have unknowingly purchased many items that were once illegally exported from your country from galleries and auction houses in the United Kingdom, Germany, France and Switzerland. “
