Alan Gussow

Alan Gussow (May 8, 1931 – May 5, 1997) was an American artist, teacher, author and conservationist.

Life and education Gussow was born May 8, 1931, in New York City but grew up in Rockville Centre, NY. He took art classes at the Pratt Institute before graduating from Middlebury College in 1952 with a degree in Literature. The following year, while studying painting at Cooper Union, he was awarded the Prix de Rome. Only 21 years old, he was the youngest ever to have won the award at that time.

In 1956, Gussow married Joan Dye, who was then a Time magazine researcher His early paintings created in the 1950s and 1960s are landscapes of a more traditional nature, depicting scenes painted from a separate vantage point. As a consultant for the National Park Service, he implemented and inaugurated the Artist in Residence program in the National Parks.

Gussow was an active teacher for 40 years. He played a significant role in establishing the fine arts program at the Parsons School of Design, where he taught through 1968, and also taught at Sarah Lawrence College, the University of Massachusetts, Middlebury College, and the University of California, Santa Cruz where he held positions in both the Environmental Studies and the Art Department.

Gussow's publications include 13 articles, essays and monographs. His book, A Sense of Place: The Artist and the American Land, published in 1972, couples works by American landscape artists spanning four centuries with excerpts of their own writing. Both this book as well as his 1993 publication, The Artist as Native: Reinventing Regionalism, inspired major gallery exhibitions.