Joseph Hackmey

Joseph D. Hackmey is an Israeli businessman, insurance company executive, actuary, investor, and an art and stamp collector. Art News listed Hackmey as one of the 200 biggest art collectors in the world. He was the chairman of Phoenix Insurance.

Chairman of the Israeli Insurance Association and Chairman of the Israeli Life Offices Association.

Biography Joseph Hackmey is a fifth-generation Israeli. to a Sephardi-Jerusalemite family on his father's side and a Sephardi-Greek-Italian family on his mother's. His sister, Nitza Kanfer, is 12 years younger than he.

Hackmey attended boarding schools in Switzerland. Hackmey received a second master's degree, in Judaic Studies from New York University, in 2013.

Hackmey knows seven languages.

Business career Hackmey commenced his insurance career in 1968 with the Israel Phoenix Assurance company. After seven years he was appointed by the board of directors as chief executive officer of the Phoenix. Four years after he appointed as CEO the Phoenix profits multiplied by five times. The international collection included Picasso, Matisse, Robert Rauschenberg, Barnett Newman, Jasper Johns, Jean Dubuffet, Mark Rothko. The Israeli collection included Reuven Rubin, Yehezkel Streichman, Arie Aroch, Joseph Zaritsky, Yitzhak Danziger, Marcel Janco, Mordecai Ardon, Aviva Uri, Raffi Lavie, Avigdor Stematsky.

Professor Mordechai Omer, director of the Tel Aviv Museum of Art, studied the collection and published a selection of it in a 600-page book. In 1998 Tel Aviv Museum of Art organized an exhibition which included 300 items from the collection.

Hackmey is a Fellow of the Royal Philatelic Society, London and a member of the Collectors Club of New York. In 1999 he has signed th Roll of Distinguished Philatelists In 2010 he was elected an associate foreign member of the Académie de philatélie, Paris. the Israel Museum, the Tel Aviv Museum, the Tel Aviv University, the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, the Israeli Philharmonic Orchestra, and is a member of the International Council of the Tate Gallery of London. He served as the Chairman of the Israeli Chess Association, and during his chairmanship, the number of Israeli international chess grandmasters had increased from 5 to 29.

He established Hackmey Hebrew Classical Library, joined by its two world-famous predecessors at Harvard University Press – the Loeb Classical Library. It offers two classical texts in facing-page translation: Hebrew and Aramaic.