Join us Friday, 17 October 2025 at 11AM ET for a conversation with Pucker Gallery artist Samuel Bak, regarding his work which confirms his often-used title, Painter of Questions.
This most recent collection of work extends his search for the meaning of Life. He helps us focus on the "IF" as central to the concept of Life itself. As "if" our very existence is at stake. Please join us!
The conversation will include:
Samuel Bak, Pucker Gallery Artist
Alexandra M. Cardon, Chief Curator, Samuel Bak Museum: The Learning Center
Dr. Carl Herbert, Gallery Associate
Bernard Pucker, Gallery Director
The exhibition Question of LifE: New Work by Samuel Bak will be on view at Pucker Gallery from 25 October through 7 December 2025.
About Our Panelists...
Samuel Bak was born on August 12, 1933 in Vilna, Poland at a crucial moment in modern history. From 1940 to 1944, Vilna was under Soviet, then German occupation. While he and his mother survived, his father and four grandparents all perished at the hands of the Nazis. At the end of the war, he fled with his mother to the Landsberg Displaced Persons Camp, where he enrolled in painting lessons at the Blocherer School in Munich. In 1948, they immigrated to the newly established state of Israel. He studied at the Bezalel Art School in Jerusalem and completed his mandatory service in the Israeli army. In 1956, he went to Paris to continue his education at the École des Beaux Arts. In 1959, he moved to Rome where his first exhibition of abstract paintings was met with considerable success. In 1961, he was invited to exhibit at the Carnegie International in Pittsburgh, followed by solo exhibitions at the Jerusalem and Tel Aviv Museums in 1963. It was after these exhibitions that a major change in his art occurred. There was a distinct shift from abstraction to a metaphysical figurative means of expression. Ultimately, this transformation crystallized into his present pictorial language. Bak has exhibited extensively in major museums, galleries, and universities throughout Europe, Israel, and the United States. He has been the subject of articles, scholarly works, and over twenty books, most notably a 400-page monograph entitled Between Worlds. In 2023 his biography entitled Art & Life: The Story of Samuel Bak was published. A 2020 exhibition at the University of Nebraska Omaha (UNO) led to the Samuel Bak Museum: The Learning Center, which opened Phase One at UNO in 2023. Phase Two envisions a brand new, state-of-the-art, free-standing facility to house over 500 works donated by Bak.
Alexandra M. Cardon is the Chief Curator of the Samuel Bak Museum: The Learning Center at the University of Nebraska Omaha (UNO). Alexandra envisions the future museum as a collaborative space that celebrates Samuel Bak’s oeuvre and educates viewers on the realities of the Holocaust, while also offering exhibitions that explore contemporary artistic responses to conflict, human rights, and genocide. Alexandra has worked in art museums and taught art history in universities and colleges. She began her museum career at the Peggy Guggenheim Collection in Venice after which she worked at the American and Canadian pavilions during the 2003 Venice Biennale, the Brooklyn Museum of Art, and in the Modern and Contemporary art department at the Philadelphia Museum of Art. She moved to Omaha in 2012 and worked for the sculptor Jun Kaneko as his studio’s registrar and archivist. She is an adjunct professor in the Art and Art history department and the Honors College at the University of Nebraska Omaha. Her research focuses on mid twentieth century European painting, particularly the production of art in the interwar years and painting in France after World War Two.
Dr. Carl Herbert is a fourth-generation physician whose career has been devoted to helping infertility patients overcome a wide spectrum of obstacles to create their families. Early in his career he participated in the founding of one of the first eIVF centers in the United States. For more than forty years, Dr. Herbert has contributed to the growth and development of assisted reproductive technologies, continually implementing the evolving techniques and optimizing their clinical applications for care. The ambiguity of a socially awkward accolade, “You got me pregnant!”, has become a recurrent reward, both humorous and joyful. By serendipity, Dr. Herbert walked into Pucker Gallery for the first time in 1985 when visiting Boston for a medical conference. From this point on, his nascent interest in art grew under the generous tutelage and encouragement of Mr. Pucker. A close personal friendship evolved as they visited artists and exhibitions around the world; exchanged thoughts on the experience and intrinsic value that art, in all its many forms, can provide individuals and society; and shared writings which illuminated these principles.
Bernie Pucker is the director of Pucker Gallery, which he founded with his wife, Sue, on Boston's historic Newbury Street in 1967. Pucker Gallery represents over fifty artists from around the world, presenting approximately ten exhibitions annually, often paired with artist talks, virtual “WebinARTs,” and Gallery receptions. Bernie is currently a Board Member at the Japan Society, Boston, and the Jewish Publication Society. He also serves on the Leadership Council for Facing History and Ourselves as well as the Artistic Advisory Board for the Terezin Music Foundation. Previously, he has served as President of Solomon Schechter Day School, President of the Newbury Street League, and Board Member for the Friends of Copley Square and The Unity Project, among others. Bernie received his MA in Modern Jewish History from Brandeis University and his BA in History and English Literature from Columbia College.