Through the Lens of Trude Fleischmann (1895-1990)
Presentation by Carey Mack Weber, Fairfield (CT),
followed by a conversation with Barbara Rosenberg Loss

Presentation by Carey Mack Weber, Curator and Director, Fairfield University Art Museum, followed by a conversation with Fleischmann’s cousin, Barbara Rosenberg Loss. Introductory remarks by Stephanie Buhmann, PhD, Head of Visual Arts, Architecture and Design at the Austrian Cultural Forum New York.

Image above: Trude Fleischmann, Sandra and Barbara with Golden Heart Necklaces, 1951, gelatin silver print. Courtesy of Barbara Rosenberg Loss. © Trude Fleischmann

After opening her own studio in Vienna at the age of just 25, Trude Fleischmann (1895-1990) had great success there in the 1920s and 30s photographing artists, dancers, actors, and other key cultural figures of the era. When the Nazis invaded during the Anschluss in 1938, she fled first to London and then to New York. She opened a studio just behind Carnegie Hall on 56th Street, in 1940 and photographed many of the artists and intellectuals of the day, including Eleanor Roosevelt, Marian Anderson, and Albert Einstein.

Carey Mack Weber is the Executive Director of the Fairfield University Art Museum and the curator of the current exhibition in the Museum’s Bellarmine Hall Galleries – Famous & Family: Through the Lens of Trude Fleischmann. She was integral to the creation of the Museum in 2010 and was named the Frank and Clara Meditz Executive Director in 2019. Carey also currently serves as the President of the Connecticut Art Trail, is the CT State Representative for the Association of Academic Museums and Galleries, sits on the Advisory Board of the Maguire Museum at St. Joseph’s University, and serves as a board member of the Connecticut League of Museums.

Barbara (Bobbie) Rosenberg Loss is the co-curator of  Famous & Family: Through the Lens of Trude Fleischmann. She was greatly influenced by the artist, her cousin, who was an integral part of her family growing up. A former English teacher and reading consultant in the Bridgeport and Fairfield Public High Schools and at Norwalk Community College, she is the author of Say the Word, A Guide to Improving Word Recognition Skills. Bobbie often incorporated her own photography into her classrooms. Her interests generated numerous photo books, including Bridgeport, Beauty and Blight, A Tour of Our City through Photographs (2016) and Views from the Train (2020). She was a contributor and consultant to the Austrian TV Documentary: Trude Fleischmann In Nackter Gesellschaft (2019), directed by Michael Kreiner and Katherina Lochmann.

This event is part of the online series “Flight or Fight. stories of artists under repression.”

Presented in connection with Jewish American Heritage Month.

The exhibition Famous & Family: Through the Lens of Trude Fleischmann, the first solo museum exhibition of the photographer’s work to be presented in the United States, is on view from May 2 – July 26, 2025, in the Museum’s Bellarmine Hall Galleries at Fairfield University Art Museum.