Bernard Greenwald, Professor of Studio Arts

In a letter to the Bard College Community, President Botstein memorialized Professor Greenwald.

To the Bard College Community:

It is with sadness that I inform the community of the death of our longtime faculty colleague, the artist Bernard Greenwald. Bernard Greenwald was born in Newark, New Jersey in 1941. He received his BFA from the Philadelphia College of Art and his MFA from Yale University School of Art. Bernard, who was a professor of studio arts in the Division of the Arts, began teaching at Bard College in 1969, and continued to teach until he retired in 2009. His teaching included a focus on printmaking. He also served as a faculty associate of the Institute for Writing and Thinking at Bard College. During his career, he additionally taught at Yale, Skidmore College, Swarthmore College, Kansas City Art Institute, Lewis and Clark College, and was an anti-bias facilitator through the Anti-Defamation League’s “A World of Difference” Institute.

Bernard’s works are included in several public collections. His paintings, inspired by the Hudson Valley landscape, explored color and how light expresses movement, travel, and a sense of place, depicting both rural and urban environs. His prints and etchings include a series derived from Old Testament themes and several reflecting the cultural turmoil during the Civil Rights and Feminist movements of the late 1950s and 1960s and the myriad influence of popular culture on those decades.

Bernard lived and painted in Red Hook, New York. On behalf of the entire college community, I extend to his family our deepest condolences and heartfelt sympathy to his wife Elena Erber who also was a longtime Bard employee, as a designer in the College's Publications Office.

Leon Botstein

Post Date: 03-05-2026