Barbara Rosenthal - Education and Early Career

Education and Early Career

At age eleven, Rosenthal was a weekly columnist for her town newspaper, The Franklin Square Bulletin.

Rosenthal attended the Brooklyn Museum Art School, studying figure drawing and painting taught by Isaac Soyer, in 1962-64; the Art Students' League, for figure drawing and painting, NYC, in 1964-66; New York University, for Art History, NYC, in 1966. She attended Carnegie-Mellon University and while there was editor of the literary-art magazine, Patterns, as a sophomore and once again as a senior. She spent her junior year at Temple University/Tyler School of Art in Rome, Italy, studying art and art history, in 1968-69; and received her BFA in painting from Carnegie-Mellon in 1970. She attended The City University of New York/City College, for education and psychology in 1970-71; Seattle Pacific College, for media and education of the gifted in 1972-73; and received her MFA in painting at The City University of New York/Queens College in 1975.

During her years as an art student and teacher, Rosenthal supplemented her earnings as an assembly-line-painting artist; as a photojournalist stringer for The Village Voice, The East Village Eye, and The New York Post; and as a go-go dancer at clubs including the famed Metropole Cafe and Club Mardi Gras in Times Square, New York City. From 1972-4, she taught printmaking and was director, set designer and lighting technician for several performances at the Lakeside School, a private high school in Seattle, Washington.