Luise Clayborn (nee Meyers) Kaish, FAAR'72, died in New York City on March 7 after a brief and challenging battle with cancer. She was 87. A sculptor of soaring ambition and achievement, and a painter of gemlike abstractions, she leaves a remarkable legacy.
Kaish received her BFA magna cum laude and MFA in sculpture from Syracuse University, where she studied with the renowned Croatian sculptor Ivan Mestrovic, and as a graduate student, created her first large commissioned work, The Saltine Warrior, which stands on the campus today.
Kaish was a Rome Prize Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow and was awarded the Arents Pioneer Medal from her alma Mater, Syracuse University. As a recipient of a Louis Comfort Tiffany Grant she studied bronze casting with Bruno Bearzi in Florence, Italy who saved and recast the Ghiberti Doors of Paradise. Other awards include the Augustus Saint-Gaudens Fellowship, Honor Award, GRA, AIA, Everson Museum Award and the H. H.Sullivan Award, Rochester Memorial Art Gallery.
Her work is included in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the Whitney Museum of American Art; the Smithsonian Institution, the National Museum of American Art, Washington DC; the Jewish Museum; the Hood Museum, Dartmouth College; the Memorial Art Gallery, Rochester, New York; the National Academy Museum; and Export Khleb, Moscow. Among her numerous commissions were the massive bronze “Ark of Revelations” for Temple B’rith Kodesh with thw architect Pietro Belluschi; “La Lumiere,” Continental Grain Co. NYC; “Christ in Glory” Holy Trinity Mission Seminary, MD; the bronze Ark for Temple Beth Shalom Wilmington, Deleware.
She was professor emerita of Columbia University, where she chaired the Division of Painting and Sculpture. She has been artist-in-residence at Dartmouth College in Hanover, New Hampshire, the University of Haifa in Israel, and the University of Washington in Seattle. She served as guest lecturer, critic, and panelist at numerous institutions and conferences. Kaish was a Trustee Emerita of the American Academy in Rome, where she served on the Executive, Finance, and Fellowship Awards Committees, served as trustee and executive member for the Augustus Saint-Gaudens Memorial, National Park Service, on the board of the Sculptors Guild, and on the New York City Fine Arts Commission nominating committee. Kaish lived and worked in New York.