Richard Lewis

I am an artist and recently retired Professor of Art at Marist College, Poughkeepsie, New York, where I taught for more than 35 years.  I served about twenty of them as Chair of the Art Department and also had three years as the College’s Dean of Academic Programs. I taught courses in studio art, art history, and art appreciation, but recently focused more on digital media, with courses in animation and digital painting as my specialty.  I also taught courses that include international travel, leading students on tours to England, France, Italy, the Netherlands, Greece, Turkey, and Japan.

From 2006 – 2022,  I helped create and then coordinated the academic programs at Marist’s branch campus (Istituto Lorenzo de’Medici) in Florence, Italy.  I also was the Director of its M.A. in Museum Studies there, where they also offer bachelor’s degree programs in Art, Art History, Digital Media, and Restoration Studies.  I have a B.F.A. in Visual Arts from Purchase College and an M.F.A. in Painting from the University of Michigan.  In addition, to writing The Power of Art (see below), I’m very active in the field of digital art and multimedia, and have authored two textbooks on digital media with James Luciana. The first was Digital Media: An Introduction (Prentice Hall, 2003). Jim and I recently finished our latest, Digital Media Foundations: A Guide for Artists and Designers for Routledge, published in June 2020.

Susan I. Lewis

I am a Professor Emerita of History at the State University of New York at New Paltz.  I studied studio art at Rhode Island School of Design and the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, have a B.A. in Art History from Wellesley College and a Ph.D. in History from Binghamton University.  I have taught art appreciation at the college level, and courses in American History, with a specialization in American Women’s History and the Progressive Era, 1890-1920 (which I consider the most interesting period in world history and the arts), as well as interdisciplinary courses in the Honors Program.  I have also served on the Board of Trustees of three historical societies in New York State: Century House in Rosendale, Gomez Mill House in Marlboro, and Historic Huguenot Street in New Paltz.

I have presented my research at regional, national, and international conferences, and have published essays in edited collections and  articles in scholarly journals.  In 2011, my study of businesswomen, Unexceptional Women: Female Proprietors in Mid-Nineteenth-Century Albany, New York, 1830-1885 (Ohio State University Press, 2009) won the Hagley Prize for the best book published in business history. “The Year of the British Blondes,” appeared in the fall 2013 issue of New York Archives magazine.  I also write a blog on New York State history called, New York Rediscovered.

We live in the Hudson Valley of New York.

The Power of Art

Together we wrote a college textbook that introduces students to the visual arts.  It has been used at over three hundred colleges and universities in North America and around the world. It is now in its third revised edition.