Alice Bernstein & Friends

Welcome to my website, where you can read articles by me and persons I am proud to have as friends and colleagues, published in many newspapers, including Charleston Chronicle, Tennessee Tribune, La Vida News/The Black Voice (Texas), Birmingham Times, Harlem News, Omaha Star, Philadelphia Sun. They illustrate the importance of Aesthetic Realism, the philosophy founded by the great American educator and critic Eli Siegel, in understanding the questions of people everywhere about the world and our individual lives. 

Click here  for "Alice Bernstein & Friends" in the news


"The People of Clarendon County"—A Play by Ossie Davis,
& the Answer to Racism!

This educational performance event, based on the book edited by journalist and Aesthetic Realism Associate Alice Bernstein (Third World Press), travels to schools, libraries, museums, churches, and universities around the country.

•  North Carolina Museum of History, Raleigh   •  Tulane University Law School, New Orleans

•  Elmont Memorial Library, Elmont, NY    •  Hamilton Fish Park Public Library, New York, NY

•  Medgar Evers College (CUNY), Brooklyn, NY         •  Baruch College (CUNY), New York, NY

•  South Carolina State University, Orangeburg & the I.P. Stanback Museum & Planetarium


 

 

Washington, DC: House Majority Whip James E. Clyburn opens Clarendon event with Alice Bernstein at the Congressional Auditorium, US Capitol Visitor Center, October 21, 2009.
Photo credit: Robert Murphy


Click here to read more about the book from Third World Press!

The People of Clarendon County
—A Play by Ossie Davis

with Photographs & Historical Documents, & Essays
on the Education That Can End Racism
Edited by Alice Bernstein


Ruby Dee, Academy Award Nominee, says of Alice Bernstein and this book:

"In her commitment to telling the story of the civil rights struggles...Alice uncovered the play, "The People of Clarendon County."... It moved my husband to think that fifty years
later, school children might learn about history by reading or acting in his play. In addition, Alice's book will also inform people about the success of the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method in enabling children to learn every subject, and ending prejudice in the classroom."

Below: Book launch February 28, 2007 at the Harlem School of the Arts, which included: 1) Alice Bernstein's account of conversations with Ossie Davis, research which led to his play and her book; 2) performance from the play by drama students, 3) interactive lesson based on the Aesthetic Realism Teaching Method by educator Monique Michael, and 4) comments by legendary actress/activist and Academy Award Nominee, Ruby Dee, wife of Ossie Davis.

Ruby Dee-AB-HarlemSchooloftheArts

Seated (l-r), Ruby Dee and Alice Bernstein, standing (l-r), drama students Bobbi Booth,
Dimitri Carter, Adrian Richburg, and teacher E. Mesiyah McGinnis.
Photo credit: Judy Rappaport

Below, at launch of the Ossie Davis Educational Endowment and revival of "The People of Clarendon County" by Ossie Davis, Local 1199 Bread and Roses, February 29, 2008:

1199revival
Standing (l-r), Haki Madhubuti, Hilda Willis, Rev. James Forbes, Alice Bernstein, Ruby Dee,
Harry Belafonte, Louis Gossett, Alan Alda, Sonya White. Photo credit: David M. Bernstein.

Read about the Oral History Project and
Documentary of Interviews with Unsung Heroes:
"The Force of Ethics in Civil Rights"

•  The 40th Anniversary of the Edisto 13 in Charleston, SC. Part One, Part Two

•  Interview with Rep. Tyrone Brooks of Georgia. Part One, Part Two, Part Three

For more about the Oral History Project go here.  


Orange Angle Press Is Proud to Publish —

AESTHETIC REALISM AND THE ANSWER TO RACISM

This book is being published with a sense of urgency and hope; urgency, because racism is still rampant in the world; hope, because there is a true, practical, kind, learnable, and yes—even beautiful—answer.

That answer is in the study of Aesthetic Realism, the education founded by the great American poet and critic Eli Siegel (1902-1978), who identified the cause of all human injustice as contempt, the “addition to self through the lessening of something else.” Racism, he explained, does not begin with race, but with the human tendency to have contempt for the world, for everything the self sees as different. 

This book documents how, through study of Aesthetic Realism, contempt changes—not into tolerance, but into true respect for other people, and a conviction that we need the difference of the world to be all we can be. 

    >> Click here to read more....


In "Alice Bernstein & Friends," as you'll see, there are interviews with people in the arts and government, accounts of current events, essays on such diverse subjects as healthcare, the cause and answer to racism, what makes a person truly important, the beauty of tap dance, and how education can succeed for every child in America.

      I had the good fortune to begin my study of Aesthetic Realism early in life, in classes I attended with my parents, Jack and May Musicant, and others. Today, as a woman, wife and mother—and a person passionately interested in world events—it pleases me immensely to tell about the value of this education for everyone in our turbulent world. 

      My husband, photographer David Bernstein, and I are Aesthetic Realism Associates.  We study in professional classes taught by Ellen Reiss, the Aesthetic Realism Chairman of Education. What we have seen about the world, art, and ourselves is NEWS! 

      "Alice Bernstein & Friends" is also the title of my column, published nationally. Articles published there also appear in many journals and in the book Aesthetic Realism and the Answer to Racism Articles Published Nationwide & Abroad by Alice Bernstein & Others (Orange Angle Press, NY: 2004).

© by Alice Bernstein. For permission to reprint please contact me by
email: Ajoybern@nyc.rr.com