DIRECTORY LISTING

Biography

Andrea Zakin is an artist and art educator who has been involved in art throughout her life. An Associate Professor, she teaches art education and foundation courses at Lehman College, CUNY where she is also the ECCE Minor Coordinator. She received her PhD in art education from NYU and her master’s in fine arts from Hunter College, CUNY. She has taught art to young children through graduate students, served as a teacher trainer and a consultant for New York City and State, NYC school districts, arts organizations, and museums. She was the Education Director for the Guggenheim Museum’s LTA program and curated its children’s exhibitions for eight years. Andrea has taught at Parsons School of Design, NYU, Rutgers University, Teachers’ College, Pratt Institute, and the School for Visual Arts, where she still teaches in the summer. 

Dr Zakin’s publications focus on artists’ cognitive decision-making processes and the integration of art into core curricula. Her work has been published in such peer-reviewed journals as Excelsior, Senses and Society, Childhood Journal, and Scientific Journals International. She has presented at numerous international, national, and state conferences.

Andrea’s paintings employ a feminist perspective to explore the socio-emotional and political impact of societal structures on women resulting in an unequal distribution of power and control. Her artwork typically features a female contextualized within and constrained by the institutional constructs of family and society, which corresponds with the ways in which women have been portrayed throughout art history. Essentially, her work is concerned with how female identity is constructed, deconstructed, and subverted due to the obstacles that women must navigate within complex, interconnected realms, including shifting power struggles in gender relationships.

Andrea has received several CUNY grants for art production and has been awarded artist residencies at the MacDowell Artists’ Colony, Altos de Chavon, and the Ossabaw Island Project. Exhibitions include Ingber Gallery, Zeus Trabia Gallery, Central Hall Gallery, Rutgers University, Tufts University, Syracuse University and Fairleigh Dickinson University as well as City College and Lehman College, CUNY. Her work is represented in the collections of Barbara Ingber, Elsa Sackler, Richard K. Manoff Advertising, Eleanor Torrey West, Caroline Brand and Francisca Turi, among others. 

Regarding art education, the question is not whether anyone can become an artist but whether anyone can make art. And the answer is yes.