Linda Weintraub is an American art writer, educator and curator. She has written several books on contemporary art. Her most recent works address environmental consciousness that defines the ways cultures approach art, science, ethics, philosophy, politics, manufacturing, and architecture.
Biography
Weintraub lives in Rhinebeck, New York. She received a Bachelor of Arts and a Masters of Fine Arts at Douglass College Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey. Weintraub is an educator having taught at The New School, Muhlenberg College, Cedar Crest College, Lafayette College, State University of New York at New Paltz, and the Hartford Art School Interdisciplinary Master of Fine Arts Program at Hartford University. During 1982-1992 she was the Director of the Edith C. Blum Art Institute at Bard College. At Oberlin College Weintraub held the position of the Henry R. Luce Professor in the Emerging Arts, where she founded an interdisciplinary arts program. She has lectured widely on the topic of contemporary art practice, environmental and ecological art. Weintraub is the Director of Artnow Publications, an enterprise devoted to applying ecological parameters for the material production of books produced using environmentally responsible processes. She designed and manages a sustainable permaculture homestead. Her hand-made home was built out of recycled cars, and is geothermally heated and cooled.
Recent books
Weintraub's most recent book, To Life!: Eco Art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet chronicles the emerging EcoArt discipline, examining a range of artistic responses to environmental issues and concerns. This book is the first international survey of 20th and 21st century artists who tackle and transform complex global problems that effect humankind other species and ecological systems. This historical and pedagogical text fosters awareness in the next generation of interdisciplinary artists: students of art, design, environmental studies and environmental science to integrate responsible behaviors and activism into their personal and professional lives. Weintraub has also authored In the Making: Creative Options for Contemporary Artists in which she examines the conceptual and practical "ways of making" as deployed by forty contemporary artists. Her book, Art on the Edge and Over: Searching for Art's Meaning in Contemporary Society offers an introduction and overview of vanguard art practices.
Curatorial work
Weintraub originated over fifty exhibitions while serving as the director of the Edith C. Blum Art Institute at Bard College and while serving as the Director of the Philip Johnson Center for the Arts, Muhlenberg College, Allentown, Pennsylvania. Recent exhibitions include: Dear Mother Nature at the Dorsky Museum, SUNY New Paltz she curated Dear Mother Nature. Smaller Footprints: Women Respond to Climate Change, for MOAH Ceder and WEAD ; Rally Round the Flag of Justice, for Redline Contemporary Art Center in Denver, Colorado. Other exhibitions Weintraub has curated include 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, "Is it Art?.
Selected books authored, co-authored and edited
To Life: Eco art in Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet 2012, University of California Press. Paperback, Unjacketed Hardcover,, Adobe PDF E-Book
Teaching Guides, To Life! Eco Art In Pursuit of a Sustainable Planet:
The Transparent Thread: Asian Philosophy in Recent American Art. 1990 Hofstra Museum, Hofstra University, Edith C. Blum Art Institute, Bard College, The Salina Art Center, Sarah Campbell Blaffer Gallery, University of Houston, Crocker Art Museum, Laguna Art Museum.University of Pennsylvania Press, ISBN cloth 0-812203094-9 ISBN paper 0-8122-1376-9
Isabel Bishop. Essay, "Chasing the Shadows of the Times: The Drawings of Isabel Bishop and her Colleagues", 1989.. Published by Chameleon Books of Rizzoli International Publishers. Toured to Arkansas Arts Center.
"My American Folk", 1989.. Published by McPherson and Company.
Process and Product: The Making of Eight Contemporary Masterworks 1988.. Edith C. Blum Art Institute, Bard College. Exhibition catalogue.
British Pop Prints 1987, Edith C. Blum Art Institute, Bard College. Exhibition catalogue.
"Charmed Places: Hudson River Artists and Their Houses, Studios, and Vistas", 1988. Harry N. Abrams Publisher,
Pre-Modern Art of Vienna: 1848-1898 1987,. Wayne State University Press. Paperback Hardcover
The Maximal Implications of the Minimal Line 1985,. Exhibition catalogue.
Thomas Hart Benton: Chronicler of America’s Folk Heritage 1984,. Edith C. Blum Art Institute, Bard College.
LandMarks: New Site Proposals by 22 Pioneers of Environmental Art 1984,. Edith C. Blum Art Institute, Bard College.
Interviews
at The Dorsky by Claire Lambe" Artist . WGXQ Radio feature story.
Recent Exhibitions, Performances
Weintraub has had a solo exhibition, entitled "Grandmother Earth" at the CHRCH Project Space in Cottekill, New York. The participatory sculptural installation took the form of a large altar-like structure on the wall and floor of the gallery, made from organic matter from local woods—seeds, mushrooms, acorns, bark, twigs, bones, shells, moss, clay, and lichens. Throughout the course of the exhibition, viewers including were invited to enlarge and expand upon the artwork by contributing their own one-foot square additions. She has exhibited in group exhibitions: "Water. Water." show at Emily Harvey Foundation, New York, NY; "Value of Food" at St. John the Divine Cathedral, New York, NY; "Food Shed" at Smack Melon Gallery in Brooklyn, NY, traveling to the CRC20 Gallery in Linlithgo, New York. Her work has also been featured at the Athens Cultural Center, Athens, New York, and the Times Center in New York City.
