Mel Alexenberg

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Mel (Menahem) Alexenberg is an artist and art educator best known for his explorations of the intersections between art, science, technology, and culture through his artworks, teaching, and writing. He now serves as the founding Dean of the Netanya School of Art and Multimedia.

He was born and educated in New York City, where he earned degrees in biology from Queens College and in education from Yeshiva University, and an interdisciplinary doctorate in art, science, and psychology from New York University. He lives in Petach Tikvah, Israel, with his wife, artist Miriam Benjamin.

Alexenberg’s artworks are in the collections of more than forty museums worldwide including Metropolitan Museum of Art and Museum of Modern Art in New York, High Museum of Art in Atlanta, Baltimore Museum of Art, Cincinnati Art Museum, Denver Art Museum, Nelson-Atkins Museum of Art in Kansas City, Portland Museum of Art in Oregon, the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, Museum der Moderne Kunst in Vienna, Victoria and Albert Museum in London, Haags Gemeentemuseum in the Netherlands, Israel Museum in Jerusalem, and Malmo Museum in Sweden.

As an educator in the US, Alexenberg served as professor of art and education at Columbia University, head of the art department at Pratt Institute, research fellow at MIT’s Center for Advanced Visual Studies, and dean of visual arts at New World School of the Arts in Miami. In Israel, he has taught at Tel Aviv University, Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, University of Haifa, Bar-Ilan University, Ariel University Center in Samaria, and Emunah College. He is founding dean of the School of Art and Multimedia at Netanya Academic College.

1 Work
2 Solo art exhibitions
3 Publications
4 References

[edit] Work

His works explore relationships between digital age art and Jewish patterns of thought, participatory art and community, and space-time systems and electronic technologies. Millions throughout the Americas, Europe and Asia have seen his environmental sculptures, multi-media installations, telecommunications art events, and exhibitions of paintings and prints that explore digital technologies and biological and cultural systems. The leading American art magazine, ARTnews, praised his LightsOROT exhibition created in collaboration with Otto Piene at MIT for Yeshiva University Museum in New York by writing: “Rarely is an exhibition as visually engaging and intellectually challenging.”

[edit] Solo art exhibitions

Cyberangels: Aesthetic Peace Plan for the Middle East (Jewish Museum in Prague, 2004)
Hidden Garden: An Art Journey into a Leaf (Jerusalem Botanical Gardens, 2007).

[edit] Publications

Educating Artists for the Future: Learning at the Intersections of Art, Science, Technology and Culture (2008) ISBN 9781841501918
Dialogic Art in a Digital World: Four Essays on Judaism and Contemporary Art (2008) in Hebrew
The Future of Art in a Digital Age: From Hellenistic to Hebraic Consciousness (2006) ISBN 9781841501369
Aesthetic Experience in Creative Process (1981) ISBN 9652260134
Light and Sight (1970)

He has written numerous papers and book chapters: including: “Ancient Schema and Technoetic Creativity” in Technoetic Arts: A Journal of Speculative Research (2006), “From Science to Art: Integral Structure and Ecological Perspective in a Digital Age” in Interdisciplinary Art Education: Building Bridges to Connect Disciplines and Cultures (2005), “Semiotic Redefinition of Art in a Digital Age” in Semiotics and Visual Culture: Sights, Signs, and Significance (2004), "Creating Public Art through Intergenerational Collaboration" in Art Education (2004), "An Interactive Dialogue: Talmud and the Net" in Parabola (2004), “Wright and Gehry: Biblical Consciousness in Postmodern Architecture” in Journal of Cultural Research in Art Education (2003), and “Jewish Consciousness and Art of the Digital Age’ in Journal of Judaism and Civilization (2003). He is former art editor of The Visual Computer: International Journal of Computer Graphics.