Art, historic site extracted from Roosevelt community

'Without art we are an endangered and endangering species." Those are the words inscribed on Jacob Landau's tombstone, and in light of recent happenings in Roosevelt, the small western Monmouth County borough where he lived from 1954 until his death in 2001, seem more like a warning than ever before.

ERIC SUCAR staff Jacob Landau's dome studio on Lake Drive in Roosevelt has been emptied of the late artist's work and closed to the public. The site served as a home and work space for Landau until he passed away in 2001 and as a gallery for his and other work until recently. Landau was more than just an important part of the rural town's noted artist community, he won international praise for his "humanist" approach to art, which explored the basic themes of human existence and morality.

Born in 1917 in Philadelphia and having studied at the Philadelphia College of Art, Landau received a Doctorate of Fine Arts from Monmouth University in 1996. His works are part of the permanent collections in numerous museums, including the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C., and the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. Landau also had major retrospectives at the New Jersey State Museum in Trenton in 1983 and at Philadelphia's Woodmere Art Museum in 1999.

Maybe more impressive than his ability to create art and educate others about how "man's inhumanity to man has worked to create the kind of society we live in," was his constant quest for knowledge. He read numerous books on all subjects, had friends like Albert Einstein and Buckminster Fuller, and had an uncanny ability to pull people from all walks of life together into his studio to push the envelope regarding discussions about the state of the human condition.

When Landau departed this earth, he left behind a legacy in that studio he had built at 30 Lake Drive. Curator Rosa Giletti, who owns the Rosa T. Giletti Fine Art Gallery in Pennsylvania and who was friends with and exclusively represented Landau for many years, worked to ensure that legacy was preserved and shared with the public. To do so, she continued to hold open gallery events at the studio and worked with Roosevelt resident David Herrstrom to form the Jacob Landau Institute.

This past year, those involved with preserving Landau's legacy met with many stumbling blocks, which have resulted in the removal of all of Landau's works from the dome studio and the permanent loss of that historic site to Roosevelt and the community at large.

Landau put the studio in a trust and said that after his death the studio should revert to his sons, Jonas of Hopewell and Stefan of New Mexico, if the trust could not ultimately find a buyer.

When Giletti and Herrstrom realized last year that the trust and the institute would no longer be able to financially sustain the maintenance and operation of the studio, they started seeking investors. However, they also had to face the grim reality of possibly losing the dome and had to simultaneously try to permanently protect the 1,000- piece core of Landau's body of work.

The institute succeeded in raising the money to purchase the core collection from Landau's family and Giletti worked to find homes for all of it.

"We raised money to buy the core collection from the sons," Herrstrom said. "But we couldn't go back to the same well to drum up support to save the studio."

Herrstrom worked for months, going to every individual, business and local, county and state group he could conjure up a connection with, seeking possible means of preserving the site.

"I got to talk to the right people, that's for sure," he said.

At every turn, Herrstrom faced opposition to preserving the site. He cited the bad economy, state program cuts, the dome not being considered a historic site because it is not yet 50 years old, and the state not considering Roosevelt "a destination spot" to invest in, as some of the reasons he was given by those who said they could not support the project. He said he came close to being able to cobble together a couple of grants, but they would not have paid off for two more years, which the institute could not afford in utility and maintenance costs.

"It still bothers me that I failed at this," he said. "I was only asking for $200,00 to $300,000. I was not asking for $2 million to $3 million and that's really the killer."

Although the institute could not come up with the money to save the studio, it did find homes for all of Landau's core works. The institute donated 300 pieces from 1930-2001, including "Holocaust Suite" and "Meditation on Love and Death," to Monmouth University in West Long Branch. Drew University in Madison received a collection of 150 of the books and articles that Landau illustrated.

California State University in Long Beach, Calif., the John Cotton Dana Library at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, the Georgia Museum of Art at the University of Georgia in Athens, Ga., the Newark Public Library in Newark, the New Jersey State Museum at Rider University in Lawrenceville, the Woodmere Art Museum in Philadelphia and the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus University in Collegeville, Pa., also received donations of Landau's works.

Giletti said the consolation for the institute in losing the studio is that these places will store and exhibit Landau's work where the public can review and meditate on the pieces. She said the recent dedication ceremony at Monmouth University served as closure for her.

"I had a little distance from the physical work and I realized that securing his work was my goal and the goal of the trust and institute from he beginning," Giletti said. "We saw the preservation of his artwork honored."

Giletti said the trust has some legal matters to attend to, but would soon disband. She said the institute would continue in its mission of exposing the public to Landau's work and philosophies. The institute will play an active role in the future of the collection at Monmouth University, with the "Holocaust Suite" moving throughout the country as part of a Holocaust program and an exhibition of other works in September at the new Jewish Heritage Museum in Freehold Township.

Although the institute will move forward, its members believe it has suffered a huge loss with the closing of the studio in Roosevelt in July.

"We did everything possible to keep it there," Giletti said, adding that Herrstrom and his wife, Connie, who took care of Landau's finances, and their daughter, Tristen, and her husband, Scott Carpenter, were a source of endless support.

For Giletti, the studio, even after Landau's passing, was always vibrant with the vital energy of the spirit of the artist.

"Whenever I would walk into that studio and hear the music and see Jacob at his art and even other images of art he collected from around the world, it just lifted my soul," she said. "I would go into that environment and feel strength and hopeful."

Giletti said Landau did not live in the studio at first. He lived with his wife, Frances, in a Pine Drive residence in Roosevelt and built the dome studio in the 1970s to work in. However, his wife took ill with Alzheimer's disease and he later sold his home and moved into the studio to have the means to take care of her.

Living in the studio he designed to work in was somewhat difficult for Landau, Giletti said. He moved his bed often and had to add a kitchen. She recalled that the unique design of the building also forced Landau to move with the light while he attempted to work.

"He had desks in various parts of the dome, even upstairs, because of the light," she said.

Herrstrom said that when he moved to Roosevelt in 1975 he became intrigued knowing that an artist was laboring away on illustrating Dante's "Inferno" in the dome he could see through the trees in his backyard.

"The idea captured my imagination," Herrstrom said.

He would later meet Landau and frequent the studio where the artist's "labor and life came together" with Francisco Goya's "Los Caprichos" looking over his shoulders and Beethoven filling his air.

Herrstrom compared the atmosphere in the dome at that time to that of a salon, with Landau inviting a constantly changing mixture of musicians, artists, physicists, poets and others in for a broad exchange of ideas.

"He was a great catalyst," Herrstrom said of Landau.

A staple in Roosevelt's culture, the Roosevelt Arts Project, a group dedicated to promoting Roosevelt artists past and present, also came together at the studio.

"It was the ultimate studio and it will be a great loss, not just to the institute, but to Roosevelt," Herrstrom said.

With the removal of Landau's art from the studio, all that will remain in Roosevelt of the artist will be the studio shell, books and tools donated to the Roosevelt Public School, works in private collections, a file of odds and ends in the historic factory and memories. The institute also hopes to keep Landau's connection with Roosevelt alive through its programs.

The institute did not want to speculate on the plans Landau's family has for the dome studio. Landau's family did not return calls for comment.