Dorothy Tapper Goldman

The Trustees of the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation mourn the loss of fellow Trustee Dorothy Tapper Goldman, who passed away on July 23, 2023. A champion of America’s founding principles, Dorothy established and later endowed a Guggenheim Fellowship in Constitutional Studies. Her wisdom and generosity led to the appointment of 17 Constitutional Studies Fellows between 2008 and 2023. 

Dorothy Tapper Goldman is president of the Dorothy Tapper Goldman Foundation, which has funded annually a Guggenheim Fellowship in Constitutional Studies since 2007.  She holds an M.S. degree in Education from the Massachusetts College of Art and a B.S. degree in the same field from Tufts University.  She has served as a tenured professor at Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston, where she taught in the departments of Interior Design and Architecture.  Ms. Goldman is an avid collector of rare and important printed Americana, from the Revolutionary era through the framing of the Constitution, as well as fine Chinese porcelain, furniture, paintings, sculpture, and Native American baskets.

She holds many private and society memberships, including in The American Antiquarian Society, The American Philosophical Society, The Grolier Club, The Metropolitan Museum of Art, The Asia Society, and The Jewish Theological Seminary.  In addition, she is a board member of The Manuscript Society, the Vice President and a member of the board of The Supreme Court Historical Society, and a former board member of the National Constitution Center.

Since 2003, Ms. Goldman has served as chair of the library advisory board of the Jewish Theological Seminary.  As her own exposure to and fascination with the magnificent and varied collection at the library deepened, she became more and more determined to find a way to share these amazing Judaic resources with the public.  After a great deal of discussion, the board of trustees, under her direction, initiated a touring exhibition program that showcased the library’s treasures in facsimile, thereby allowing wider access to its resources without risk of loss or damage to the actual priceless articles.  These remarkably successful exhibitions and her establishment of a lending program with the Metropolitan Museum of Art have been the hallmarks of her board chairmanship at JTS.