page_title: Jacob Lipkin
section_title: A Prophet in Philadelphia
hierarchical_section_title: Jacob Lipkin / A Prophet in Philadelphia
caption_attribution_description: English: “The Prophet, Socrates” by Jacob Lipkin, 1965. Eight-feet high and carved from Radio Black, Vermont marble, the sculpture was originally installed at JFK Plaza in Philadelphia but now stands at Cret Park and Ben Franklin Parkway.
context_page_description: Jacob Lipkin, An American Sculptor
  Jacob Lipkin, an American sculptor, was born April 19, 1909
  in New York City’s Lower East Side.
  Lipkin carved in stone and wood with a humanist’s sensibility,
  often using "creatures and people from mythology to convey the harmonious connection between Man and Nature".
  Between 1937 and 1940, Lipkin studied art in Manhattan at the Educational alliance, The Cooper Union, Art Students League of New York and Leonardo da Vinci Art School.
  By 1940, Lipkin devoted himself fully to sculpting. He worked and lived his last 40 years in the modest home, studio, and sculpture garden he had built himself in the Township of Babylon, N.Y.
  Lipkin's work was exhibited with artists including Chaim Gross, Louise Bourgeois, Louise Nevelson, and Isamu Noguchi in the 1940s to 1950s including at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, Providence Art Club, New Jersey Society of Painters and showings at public museums including the Brooklyn Museum and the Whitney Museum of American Art.
  In the 1950s Lipkin was an instructor at the North Shore Community College and associate professor at Silvermine College.
context_section_description: Jacob Lipkin preferred to donate his sculptures to public institutions where they could be enjoyed by the public rather than selling to private collectors, according to the New York Times. But,  due to financial constraints and having to support a family, he also bartered his artworks for services when needed, “That’s the way I get along. I made my dentist a lovely rooster in wood, and he made me a beautiful bridge in porcelain. A veterinarian altered one of my cats, so I carved a squirrel in stone as payment.”
  In 1967 Lipkin offered the eight-foot high Socrates, The Prophet to the township of Babylon where it could be erected at the City Hall. The town leadership refused. Then Lipkin spoke to a personal friend, Robert A. Donner, a Philadelphia resident who worked in Philadelphia as a political liaison with the Park's department. Donner spoke to Paul M. Ingersoll, the Vice-President of the Provident National Bank and Ingersoll became intrigued with Lipkin's work. A 30-year retrospective exhibition of Lipkin's work was planned and the bank insured over 40 of Lipkin's works for $14 million in order to ship the sculptures to Philadelphia.
  On April 25, 1968, the two-month exhibition had its official opening in the marbled gallery of the Provident National Bank. Socrates, The Prophet, was not in the exhibition gallery. It had been dedicated a week before and placed in the John F. Kennedy Plaza, Philadelphia. At the opening, the curator of the Philadelphia Zoo expressed his desire in having the Ape, a small granite sculpture Lipkin had carved. It was then purchased and became a permanent part of the zoo's collection of fine art.
caption: “The Prophet, Socrates” by Jacob Lipkin, 1965. Eight-feet high and carved from Radio Black, Vermont marble, the sculpture was originally installed at JFK Plaza in Philadelphia but now stands at Cret Park and Ben Franklin Parkway. Photograph by Richard Rivera.
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