Brief Professional Bio
Linda Weintraub is a curator, educator, artist, and author of several popular books about contemporary art. She has earned her reputation by making the outposts of vanguard art accessible to broad audiences. The current vanguard, she believes, is propelled by environmental consciousness that is not only the defining characteristic of contemporary manufacturing, architecture, science, and philosophy; it is delineating contemporary art. Weintraub’s books exploring contemporary art and ecology include WHAT’s NEXT? Eco Materialism & Contemporary Art (2018), To LIFE! Eco Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet (2012), and Avant-Guardians (2007), a series of textlets that include EcoCentric Topics: Pioneering Themes for Eco-Art; Cycle-Logical Art: Recycling Matters for Eco-Art; EnvironMentalities: Twenty-two Approaches to Eco-Art. Weintraub applies environmental concerns to her personal life by managing a sustainable homestead where she practices permaculture. Two other books explore how artists who are “free radicals” vitalize culture: In the Making: Creative Options for Contemporary Art (2003) identifies the aspects of becoming an artist that are typically neglected from curriculums: choosing your audience, mission, inspiration, attitude, and definition of success. Art on the Edge and Over: Searching for Art’s Meaning in Contemporary Society (1995) explores the social, religious, economic, and political sources of artistic
She served as the director of the Edith C. Blum Art Institute located on the Bard College campus where she toured many of the fifty exhibitions she curated, and published over twenty catalogues. Weintraub was the Henry Luce Professor of Emerging Arts at Oberlin College; and currently teaches in the Nomad9 MFA program at the University of Hartford. She is the curator of the Artnauts’ 20th Anniversary exhibition. Other curated exhibitions include Dear Mother Nature, Lo and Behold: Visionary Art in the Post-Modern Era, Process and Product: The Making of Eight Contemporary Masterworks, Landmarks: New Site Proposals by Twenty Pioneers of Environmental Art, Art What Thou Eat: Images of Food in American Art, and The Maximal Implications of the Minimal Line. Weintraub has exhibited her own work at such venues as the Cathedral of St. John the Divine in Manhattan.
EDUCATION
BA, Douglas College, Rutgers University, 1964
MFA, Rutgers University, 1970
TEACHING
Lafayette College, Easton, PA, Lecturer, 1971-1973
Cedar Crest College, Allentown, PA, Lecturer, 1973-1975
Muhlenberg College, Allentown, PA, Lecturer, 1970 – 1976
Oberlin College, Oberlin, OH, Henry Luce Professor of Emerging Arts, 2010 – 2013
SUNY (State University of New York) New Paltz, NY, Lecturer, 2014
The New School, New York, NY, Lecturer, 2015.
Nomad 9, Hartford University MFA program, artist-in-residence, 2017 – 2021
MUSEUM DIRECTOR / CURATOR
Philip Johnson Center for the Arts, Muhlenberg College, 1976-1982
Edith C. Blum Art Institute, Bard College, 1982 – 1992