It is with great sadness that members of the Departments of History of Art and Cinema and Media Studies learned that our longtime supporter, Mr. Elliot Jaffe, passed away on November 29, 2023. Mr. Jaffe was a graduate of the Wharton School (’49) at the University of Pennsylvania, and, together with Mrs. Roslyn Jaffe, his partner in life, business, and philanthropy, he founded Dress Barn. Dress Barn began as a visionary act of entrepreneurship in the world of clothing retail, and just as they transformed the world of clothing retail, so Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe have challenged and inspired our intellectual community with their commitment to art education, educational access, and making big dreams a reality. Many of us knew Elliot Jaffe personally because he and Roslyn tended the growth of our department with both care and interest. The Jaffes served for several years, along with other alumni, on an advisory board for the department. We knew Elliot Jaffe as a man of strong and clear ideas, great generosity toward and interest in our department, fabulous stories, and a terrific sense of humor.
Elliot told of being steered toward department stores while at Penn by Craig Sweeten, who was then serving in the University’s Placement Service. He also described Sweeten as helping him navigate the barriers of anti-Semitism he encountered. In a lovely coincidence, Sweeten’s office was located in what is now the Jaffe Building, beloved home of the Department of the History of Art. The Jaffes helped shape our department at a key moment when there was a plan afoot to move History of Art from its offices in Meyerson Hall to a building in need of renovation. Tony Atkin had done a preliminary design for both the renovation and the construction of a new wing. After learning about this plan, Elliot wanted to come to Philadelphia to learn more. Atkin presented the design over breakfast at the faculty club before walking Elliot to the site, and by lunchtime, he was ready to commit to the project that resulted in the Department of History of Art being one of the very first departments a student encounters when they set foot on Penn’s campus. Some years later, still feeling that not enough students had encountered art during their time at Penn, Elliot expressed a desire to endow a professorship that was initially in Contemporary Art, and that eventually became the Elliot and Roslyn Jaffe Endowed Professorship in Film Studies. This, along with public programming funds that accompanied the Jaffe professorship, supported not only the expansion of the curriculum in History of Art into the realm of moving images, but also fostered the nascent Program of Cinema and Media Studies, which became a department in its own right in 2023.
Mr. Jaffe served on the Board of Advisors at Penn Arts and Sciences, and although he did not have the opportunity to take many humanities courses while a student at Penn, he cultivated a knowledge and love of art over the course of his life, and felt compelled to try to help students such as himself discover arts and humanities courses during their college years. As he stated in a Winter 1994 interview for the School of Arts and Sciences, “I didn't have room for any art or music appreciation courses in my schedule but, to be honest, since no one had ever planted the seed, I probably wouldn't have taken them up on my own. And when I got out of Wharton, I was really charging ahead to make up for the years I had lost to the military and the war. It was only many years later that I realized just how I had deprived myself of the fullness and richness that the arts can bring to life. As a result, I understand what it is to come out of the cultural desert, so to speak, and now that I can make a contribution, I want it to be in an area that I missed, such as History of Art.”
Image: Roslyn Jaffe, Elliot Jaffe, and Alexandra Jaffe (C'14), November 1, 2014 at Jaffe 20/55 event.
