Three students of the Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design will each receive an annual tuition scholarship for their studies at the Academy thanks to the generous donation of the Shatz Family Foundation.
The Shatz family has come full circle with the launch of the Deane and Paul Shatz Scholarship and the Deane and Paul Shatz Prize for an Outstanding Project in the Field of Community Involvement.
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Returning to Bezalel some 80 years after Boris Schatz died while fundraising on behalf of the Academy in the US in 1932, the Shatz family is signing on to enable students who can’t afford tuition to study at the prestigious arts and design academy.
Part of the $10,000 donation will go towards creating a prize for an outstanding project that focuses on community involvement – the first of its kind at Bezalel to acknowledge outstanding achievement specifically within the framework of community involvement.
Bezalel offers 14 academic courses that deal with social activities. These range from a course in the Industrial Design department that deals with design for those with disabilities and a course in the Visual Communications department dealing with advertising social issues, to a course in the Photography department dealing with activities in East Jerusalem.
The Deane and Paul Shatz Prize for an Outstanding Project in the Field of Community Involvement will be awarded during a special ceremony that will take place during Hannukah for works done during the previous academic year.
“We chose to partner with Bezalel as we saw an opportunity to make a difference in students’ lives while being part of the Schatz legacy,” said Paul Shatz. “We also felt it was something that our children would be inspired to continue when we’re no longer around.”
A stockbroker, Paul, worked his way up the corporate ladder at AG Edwards and Sons until the firm went public in 1971 and he became a senior vice president and a member of the firm’s Board of Directors.
Paul’s innovations – he introduced Mutual Funds to the firm – his success in growing and developing the sales team and in financial planning, enabled AG Edwards to grow from a small firm of 12 branches to more than 450, from 120 brokers to more than 5,000. Fund sales went from $6 million to over $3 billion by the time he retired in 1987.
Deane, 84, was a volunteer at the Council on World Affairs and the St. Louis Visitor Center for many years. She also helped to establish a “half-way house” (half prison/half school) for juvenile delinquents in the inner city of St. Louis, Missouri.
After the children left the house, Deane became a broker with AG Edwards until Paul retired in 1987, and they moved from St. Louis to Washington, DC to be with two of their daughters and pursue her political interests.
Deane then became a member and board member of the Corcoran Gallery of Art and Corcoran College of Art and Design (the Bezalel equivalent in Washington DC). The Shatz family is hoping to “make a match” between the two Art and Design schools so a joint exhibition can be held at Corcoran early in 2012.
“The Shatz family’s artistic genes run deep,” says Paul. “All our children and grandchildren are artistic or involved in art in one way or another, and so our collaboration with Bezalel was a natural fit for us. And the fact that there is already a Schatz connection to the Academy made it even more perfect and we look forward to a long association with Bezalel.
"But most importantly, we look forward to being able to help young, aspiring artists find their voice where they would otherwise have struggled.”
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