Wind, Dina

Dina Wind (1938 - 2014) was born in Haifa, British-mandate Palestine (now Israel). Drafted into the Israel Defense Forces after high school, she was a corporal during the 1956 Sinai campaign handling confidential communications. She later earned her Bachelor of Arts from Hebrew University in Jerusalem, then came to the United States in 1963, completing her Master of Arts in 1975 at the University of Pennsylvania. She also studied at the Barnes Foundation with Leon Sitarchuk, whose sculpture Pillar is also on view at Woodmere. Exhibited worldwide, Wind has had multiple solo exhibitions in Philadelphia and New York, and in Philadelphia is currently represented by Bridgette Mayer Gallery.

Wind worked primarily with scrap metal, making what she called "three-dimensional drawings." She would frequent junkyards to find things such as springs, car bumpers, and tools, altering her material into an assemblance of lyricism and elegance, orchestrating the balance of contrasting forms and shapes. Woodmere is honored to display 1986's Spring & Triangle, enlarged on a monumental scale, reaching for the stars, engaging the sky and clouds, and speaking to the trees.

With her husband Jerry, Wind was an active patron and supporter of the arts in Philadelphia, since 2005 supporting the Samuel S Fleisher Art Memorial's annual juried show, the Wind Challenge Exhibition Series as of 1978. The Winds also created the Art and Social Transformation Series, a series of lectures and programs at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and they established the Dina Wind Sculpture Conservation Fund at Woodmere to conserve the museum's outdoor sculptures.