Mel Alexenberg

Mel Alexenberg was born in 1937 in New York City

Mel (Menahem) Alexenberg was born in 1937 in New York City to Abraham and Jeanne Alexenberg. As a child he spent summers in the Catskill Mountains, studying and drawing the animals of forests and ponds.

He earned a degree in biology from Queens College in 1958 and a degree in education from Yeshiva University in 1959. He also studied at the Art Students League of New York. In 1969 New York University awarded him an interdisciplinary doctorate in art, science and cognitive psychology.

During his doctoral studies he used an early computer plotter to make geometric images and painted over them in wax. His painting Noise Control appeared on the cover of International Science and Technology in April 1966. His prints, sculptures and multimedia works are held in museum collections around the world.

In the United States he taught at Columbia University, headed the art department at Pratt Institute, was a research fellow at MIT and served as a dean at New World School of the Arts in Miami. In Israel he founded an open school in Haifa in 1971 and Ramat Hanegev College in Yeruham in 1977. He also taught at several Israeli universities and sat on the Wolf Foundation council from 2002 to 2017.

He lives in Raanana with his wife, the artist Miriam Benjamin.