Robert Bersson

Born in Hawaii and raised in Brooklyn and Spring Valley, New York, Robert Bersson graduated from Brandeis University with a BA degree in studio art. His instructors included Peter Grippe, Philip Guston, and Jacob Lawrence. During his graduate years at the University of Maryland, he studied with Anne Truitt and David Driskell and joined a Maryland faculty in 1977 that included such notable artists as Sam Gilliam and Martin Puryear. To the present, Bersson continues to create artworks in a...See more

Born in Hawaii and raised in Brooklyn and Spring Valley, New York, Robert Bersson graduated from Brandeis University with a BA degree in studio art. His instructors included Peter Grippe, Philip Guston, and Jacob Lawrence. During his graduate years at the University of Maryland, he studied with Anne Truitt and David Driskell and joined a Maryland faculty in 1977 that included such notable artists as Sam Gilliam and Martin Puryear. To the present, Bersson continues to create artworks in a variety of media and exhibits widely. A master educator, he has received a National Art Education Association "Art Educator of the Year Award" and the James Madison University Distinguished Teaching Award. His areas of expertise are modern and contemporary art history and students flock to these and other courses he teaches in new media, art criticism, aesthetics, and art in society. Growing out of his innovative teaching methods, Dr. Bersson has written two major art appreciation/art history textbooks, Worlds of Art (Mayfield, 1991) and Responding to Art (McGraw-Hill, 2003) that are used in colleges and universities across North America. A resident of Harrisonburg in Virginia's Shenandoah Valley for the past twenty-two years, Dr. Bersson has been active in community affairs. He is a founder of Citizens for Downtown, an arts-centered downtown revitalization organization, and is the leader of the Blacks Run Restoration Project, an ongoing stream restoration/beautification project that has evolved into a seven-mile, linear-park greenway through the city. Relating art to society has always been central to Bersson's efforts as a writer, artist, educator, and community volunteer, and the artwork in the new children's book, Stripes and Stars (Legacy, 2003), shows this. The "Flag" drawings and paintings featured in Stripes and Stars are creative interpretations of the American flag, the most basic symbol of our democratic, multicultural society. Executed between 1995 and 2002 and exhibited in art galleries in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington, D.C., the expressive Flag Pictures, in children's book format, reach out to stimulate the creativity and aesthetic appreciation of young children of all backgrounds. See less