Barbara Nessim Collection
- Part of
- Glaser Design Archives
- Abstract
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Barbara Nessim is an artist, illustrator and designer whose career defies typical artistic categorization. She was born in the Bronx and graduated from Pratt in 1960, early in her career she published illustrations in publications including New York Magazine, Harper’s Bazaar, Time, Essence Magazine, Sports Illustrated, Rolling Stone, and Ms. Magazine. She was one of very few women working in the illustration industry during this period. In the early 1980s, Nessim was one of the first illustrators to master the personal computer as a tool of art creation when she held a residency at Time Inc., and she was later affiliated with IBM. Nessim straddles the worlds of both commercial illustration and fine art and has created works in many different mediums. Her work can be found in the permanent collections of The Whitney Museum of American Art, Los Angeles County Museum of Art, and the National Portrait Gallery.
Nessim began teaching at SVA in 1967, where she taught figure drawing and conceptual approaches to illustration classes. She was a key instructor at the launch of SVA’s landmark computer art program, where she taught a portfolio class. She continued to teach at SVA until 1992, when she was appointed chair of the illustration department at Parsons School of Design.
The Barbara Nessim Collection is composed primarily of posters and drawings; the drawings are not yet processed and will be available at a later date.
Sample Images
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