OBITUARIES

Abstract artist Sabina Moss, 92

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Sabina (Migicovsky) Moss died at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale on Oct. 21, 2018, after a long struggle with Parkinson’s disease and dementia. She was 92.

The fifth of sixth children, she was born in Montreal on April 4, 1926, to Russian immigrants Joseph and Nessa (Pleskov) Migicovsky.

A passionate art lover and abstract artist for much of her life, she attended École des Beaux Arts in Montreal. Later, she took classes at The New School in Manhattan, where she studied with artists including Henry Pierson, Leon Manso, Angelo Savelli and Licio Isolani. She had exhibits in the Hewlett-Woodmere Library and North Shore Community Art Center on Long Island in 1983, and at the Honey Sharp Gallery and Tyringham Galleries in Massachusetts.

In the early 1960s, she showed her work in a few outdoor shows near Washington Square Park in Manhattan. She took college courses at Sir George Williams University and McGill University in Montreal, and at Adelphi on Long Island.

In addition to her artwork, in her early 20s, she was a fencer, winning an award at Montreal’s YWHA annual fencing house tourney in 1949. After being trained at Queen Mary Hospital in Montreal, she worked at Allan Memorial Institute where she became a head EEG lab technician.

She lived in Montreal until she married Jay Moss, a designer for NBC and a sculptor, on Jan. 25, 1959, after meeting the previous summer at Avaloch, a resort across from Tanglewood in Lenox, Massachusetts. Jay had a house on the Stockridge Bowl.

They raised two sons, Lloyd and Jordan, in Cedarhurst on Long Island, and moved to Riverdale in 2007.

In the 1980s and ‘90s, she worked and volunteered in many New York City art institutions, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the New Museum, the Museum of Natural History, and the Museum of Modern Art. From 1987 to 2000, she worked full-time as a receptionist at the American Federation of Arts in Manhattan. She also volunteered in Cedarhurst for the American Field Service, where she developed media contacts and worked on the committee to select students seeking to study abroad.

She loved meeting people, learning about them, connecting them, at whatever gathering she was at. She was even passionate about interviewing every waiter and waitress she encountered, including asking what else they did, and what they want to be when they grow up.

By her actions, she deeply expressed that every human she came across was interesting and important.

In addition to her husband and sons, she is survived by her granddaughter Devin, daughter-in-law Margaret, and sister Eleanor, as well as many more relatives she loved very much in Canada and the United States.

Memorial contributions may be made to DreamYard at DreamYard.com, which works with Bronx youth, families and schools “to build pathways to equity and opportunity through the arts.”

Sabina Moss,