“Women who visit the salons on a regular basis develop a sense of discrimination and appreciation,” the cosmetics magnate Helena Rubinstein once wrote. “It is like visiting museums and recognizing the work of famous artists.” She was talking about her own beauty salons, not the sort of literary gatherings associated with Gertrude Stein. But she had been to that kind of salon, too, in Paris and London, and her association of self-care with connoisseurship was deliberate.
That connection runs throughout the Jewish Museum’s stimulating exhibition “Helena Rubinstein: Beauty Is Power,” the first museum show devoted to this entrepreneurial makeup doyenne (1872-1965).
