Frederick Franck

Born in the Netherlands in 1909, Frederick Franck began his career as an oral surgeon before moving more seriously to his artist pursuits in the 1930s.  Between 1958-1961, he served as a doctor on the staff of renowned missionary and humanitarian Albert Schweitzer in Africa. In 1962 Franck was the only artist invited to draw all four sessions of the Second Vatican Council in Rome, and for his efforts he was awarded a medal by Pope John XXIII shortly before his death.Frederick Franck’s sculpture and artwork are in the permanent collections of The Museum of Modern Art, the Whitney Museum, the Tokyo National Museum, and other public and private collections. He was the author of over thirty books, including The Zen of Seeing (1973), and the award-winning Pacem in Terris: A Love Story (2000), as well as an editor of What Does it Mean to be Human (2001), recently translated into Spanish and Chinese. He was recently honored with the World Citizenship Award by the Nuclear Age Peace Foundation. Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands knighted him Officer of Orange-Nassau in 1994.He died in 2006, at the age of 96. Franck said of his home, “Pacem in Terris is not tied to any particular religion, but to all… and to none. For I hope that it may speak also to those who, while shunning religious labels, share fully in the specifically human quest for meaning and for values to live by. For to be human or not to be, that is the question!”His classic book The Buddha Eye was reissued by World Wisdom, with some new additions, in 2004. He is also the editor of The Messenger of the Heart.