 Good morning. Good afternoon. Good evening. Happy Halloween. You can go to live in France, but you cannot become a Frenchman. You can go to live in Germany or Turkey or Japan, but you cannot become a German or Turk or Japanese, but anyone from any corner of the earth can come to live in America and became American. Welcome back to A Nation of Immigrants, a new talk show program featuring the lives of immigrants, knowledge, diversity, and inclusion. Created by Sing Tank, Hawaii, and the Kingsfield Law Office, we invite renowned immigrants come to the show to discuss their life stories, immigration adventures, and contributions to cultural diversity. Today is my great honor to invite my advisor, my mentor, my teacher, Professor Jonathan Fember to the show. Professor, how are you? I'm great. Thank you for inviting me. Thank you, Professor. We know each other for 22 years. You are the first American I knew, and I learned so much from you in the past 22 years, and I'm continuing learning, and today we want to learn about your family history. I know Marianne, your fantastic wife, fantastic novelist. I know Noni, Maya, and Henry, and your children, but I didn't know much about your parents or your grandparents. But first, please allow me to read a very abridged version of your bio. Your bio is going to take me five hours to read the full version, but please allow me to read a shorter version so we can begin the interview. I have so many questions I want to ask about you. So Professor Jonathan Fember is a very prominent art historian of modern and contemporary art. In my view, he's the best art historian in the United States. He's a program director of the PhD in creativity program at the University of the Arts in Philadelphia, and a gut shell professor emeritus from the University of Illinois, Bernard Champagne. He's also of art since 1940, strategies of being the mostly wide-read survey of postmodern art, and a co-creator of Imagine America icons of 20th century American art, the award-winning PBS television documentary of 2005. Professor Fenberg is the author of first major monograph on the leading Chinese artist, Zhang Xiaogang. Professor Fenberg is also the author of some 30 art books and catalogs on modern art, some have been translated into multiple languages. His most recent book is Modern Art at the Border of Mind and Brain, and also pleased to report that Professor Fenberg's important books on children's art trilogy have been published, and one is very theoretical. Two of them are more art history-oriented. One of them has been translated into Chinese language and has been very well received by the international readership. Well, this is just a very short abridged version, Professor. As I eagerly jump into asking your questions, you grew up in Chicago, and your father was a very prominent scholar as well. But how about your grandparents? Well, my father was a psychoanalyst, and even that was sort of an accident of his birth and background. To back up a little bit, my, his parents emigrated to the United States from, probably from, you know, the Baltic region, and from either Lithuania or Estonia. And they, and he was born in New York when they landed in New York, and then they were on their way to Cleveland, so they were only briefly in New York, but that's where he was born. I don't, I'm not even sure what their name was before that, but we know that once they went to Ellis Island, their name was Feinberg, and they then, and they then went to Cleveland, and he had, there were, there were, he had five siblings, or he was one of five siblings, and in Cleveland, and it was the Depression. And so they lived in a Jewish ghetto in Cleveland, and, and his father started a cheese business in Cleveland, and my, and my father used to remember as a, as a young man hauling milk cans on and off of a horse draw and cart that they had to deliver them the milk and cheese to people in Cleveland. And he then, he was interested in, in field zoology. He went to the Ohio State University, and he was interested in field zoology, and his professor at the time said, there is no way that a Jew can get a professorship in field zoology in America today, so you should do something else. Which year was that? That would have been probably about 1935. 35. Oh, okay. And so he went, he decided to put himself on a ship, and went down to, to Sao Paulo, Brazil to study in a very famous research institute called Butantan, which was the world's most famous research place for reptile study. And he came back with a little, my brother still has this leather-bound book that he made, where he meticulously drew the anatomy of snakes, heads, and other kinds of things. But while he was down there, he wasn't down there very long. And he had some relatives there. His father's brother had gone to Brazil. So he knew some people in Brazil. And he, anyway, he was down there for a short time, and he received a letter from his mother saying that she had applied to medical school for him, and he got in and she paid the first year tuition, and he had to come home. So, so he came home and he went to medical school, and he graduated about 1939. And by that time, he had met my mother and her parents, her, she never knew her father, but her, but, and she, and she grew up in an orphanage in Cleveland. And, but her mother worked in the orphanage and she knew her. And, and I knew her. I mean, I eventually met her. And I, and I met my father's parents as well, but didn't really know them. I met my, my father's mother only once when I was very young, and in Cleveland. And, and his father, I knew as a very old man, but, you know, I was quite young when he died. And, but my mother's mother, I knew well. And, so, and, but I don't know what, I don't know what my mother's father's origins were, but my mother's mother had been born in the United States, somewhere in Pennsylvania, and I think her parents also emigrated to the United States from probably also from Lithuania or, you know, from Estonia, that sort of region. So they were all Eastern European Jews. And my father went to medical school. It's an incredible story. He went to medical school and met my mother in Cleveland. They got married. She was 19 years old. And they, and when he finished his medical school training, they went down to, to New Orleans for his internship. And in those days, in interns had were required to live in the hospital. And, and wives were not permitted. So she had to find an apartment somewhere. And they had no money, because nobody got paid anything in those days as interns. And he went to charity hospital in New Orleans, which was the largest public hospital in the country. And at the time, but remember, this is before penicillin. So he's down there and there's the DeBakey brothers were doing heart surgery pioneering heart surgery in a converted garage in New Orleans. And he was down there training. And one day he saw a an advertisement on the bulletin board for a country doctor. So he and my mother packed up. They she she had been living over a restaurant in the in the French quarter of New Orleans. And in fact, over a restaurant called two jacks, which is still there. And the family just took pity on her gave her a room with a flashing Coca Cola sign in the window. And and and used to and used to feed the two of them occasionally. But so they took this job in the in the Bayou country of Louisiana, Southern Louisiana. And at the time, there was a telegraph line that ran through what is what the parish, which is like the county. And, and, and there was one road. And my father would would get a notification on the telegraph line that somebody was sick and needed the doctor and they would jump in their Jeep. My mother would bring a blanket and Ritz crackers and he brought his his his medical bag and they had no idea what they were going to find. And they would drive up to wherever it was they've been called. And they'd get there and they'd find he said one time he saw some typically he would see would nobody would call a doctor until they were so sick, they couldn't work anymore. So and so he would find people with staff infections that were so advanced that they're blown up like balloons. And they would treat that with sulfa drugs because they didn't have penicillin that no antibiotics yet. That didn't come in until a few years later. And then my so one time he said he went up there and some guy had cut his hand off with an axe. And he got there and he picked up the hand and he got safety pins and retractors you know when you when you cut the ligaments in the hand the the ligament retracts into a into a sort of a sheath and you have to reach in there and pull them out. So he pulled them all out reconnected them with safety pins until they got them all connected, sewed them back together and then jumped in his Jeep and ran back to see if he got the anatomy right he went to go find his anatomy book to see if he got it right. And the guy got his hand back which is unbelievable he lost some nerves but the hand was still working. Anyway so that was there and then the war started and my father saw this coming and especially as a Jew I think he felt some particular commitment about about fighting Hitler. And so he volunteered and they sent him off because he was a doctor they send him off to Hawaii. And so he and my mother landed in Honolulu they lived in an army house right on the end of Hickam field right next practically next to Pearl Harbor. And so that's where they were and he was and he said you know nobody thought there was anything potentially going to happen and he said he almost never wore his uniform that the officers all would go play golf and you know drink at the officer's club and and once a week they would they would test the big cannon so there's you hear the sounds and he said one day he he woke up and he heard all this noise he looked out the window and he saw the shingles in the house next door going up and down like typewriter keys and he said you know this was the Japanese attack it was machine gun fire hitting the roof in the house next door and that was the beginning of the assault on Pearl Harbor and my mother was by that time eight months pregnant with my brother and so they they threw her into a into a into a jeep and drove her way up into the mountains where she stayed and he didn't see her for a month and he was he said he remembers he remember pulling out the drawer of his desk and looking in and he saw there was an eight millimeter camera and it was revolver and he said he hesitated for a moment about which to grab but he grabbed his revolver and his helmet got in the jeep and started looking after all these people that have been injured in the in the assault so and then when my mother someone it was safe they thought it was safe they sent my mother and my and my then baby brother who was who's my older brother back to the United States and my mother went to live with her parent her mother and her stepmother stepfather in Chicago and and my father when soon as the war was over came home and and when he came home he went back to Chicago not knowing really anything about it and he tried to get and he wanted to be an obstetrician and he tried to find a residency in obstetrics and there wasn't one so the only thing that was available was a psychiatric presidency so he took it and he ended up being he then ended up training in psychoanalysis he was one of the first child psychoanalysts trained at the Chicago Institute which was fairly new at that time right after the war and he became ultimately the president of the psychoanalytic society in Chicago so that was my back my my parents background well thank you when I was growing up you grow up basically in Chicago in the suburbs in the Chicago yes by the park right yeah so um so I was in Glen in Glencoe which is the furthest north suburb on the lake that was still part of Cook County and um and you know I was in a suburban high school it was a fairly affluent area um and um I was just um I think I've always been a very independent character I think I had some I think I probably would have been diagnosed as a slightly dyslexic had anybody done that in those days but I was a slow reader um and um and I also was kind of a rebellious character so I never really wanted I was bored in school I never wanted to do what everybody else was doing in school so in the fourth grade uh they were going to hold me back a year because they said I couldn't read and my mother knew perfectly well I was reading at home I just didn't want to do it in school and so she went into school and they handed me the workbook and I did the year's workbook in an hour and the teacher of course was furious because then she realized that I was just not doing it um and I had a similar kind of experience all the way through school and I you know when I was in the eighth grade I just didn't want to be in the classroom so that you know I was very lucky I had very um I had very insightful teachers who tolerated this but I had a teacher who said to me well if you don't want to be in class go into the science room and just go look at the rocks and the plants and you know and that's how I spent my my middle school years never going to class and then when I got to high school I had a similar kind of experience where I was just it was felt like a factory to me and I didn't want to be there and I started and I was very lucky because I ran into a an art teacher in the high school who um who would sign me out to his class when he knew perfectly well I wasn't there because he knew that I wasn't lazy he just he but that I wasn't interested in class so I would go to some classes and I and he taught me how to make how to carve stone and carve wood and I started making sculpture and very quickly I was welding sculpture in my father's garage and I was spending the day making sculpture in my father's garage and I would sometimes go to my English classes which I like and then I started taking two English classes at the same time so that by the middle of my third year I had enough credits really to graduate except for Jim and they wouldn't graduate me from the from high school without four years of Jim and um and I decided to apply to to college on my own and the school guidance counselor said there's no way you're going to get into college with that record we're not going to send your transcript that we refuse to send it and my father had to go into school and say you don't have a right not to send it you have to send it whether you like it or not so they did and I I applied myself to the harbor not knowing my father knew no one who'd ever gone to an eye of the school I've gotten onto a train and I went to Cambridge, Massachusetts and made an appointment with the director of admissions and I somehow managed to persuade him to accept me into college so I really didn't have a high school degree but I got into Harvard when I got into Harvard the people in the high school were so mad at me because because of that and they also thought my father had some kind of connections which was a big joke and um so anyway so then I went to college and in college I was much more interested in things but it was hard for me because I wasn't a good reader um I and I and I specifically took the hardest classes I could take because somehow I had my head that that would be better for me so you know I um but the thing that really made me that an art historian you know so I was making sculpture in high school welding and when I got to Harvard there was Harvard is Harvard and the University of Chicago are probably the two universities in America that are so completely local centered that they had no facilities even for somebody to do art which took it seriously and so I went around and I found a building in the Radcliffe yard that had been converted to oil heat and it had an old coal bin and they gave me the coal bin as a studio because it was fireproof and I welded sculpture in there from my four years at Harvard but it was in the middle of the night and um you know so that's what I that I was doing that and then I also took a my freshman year of college I took a an art history class on 17th century Dutch painting with a professor named Seymour Slive who was just wonderful and you know it kind of changed my life I had no idea there was such a thing as an art historian I didn't know my mother had been a painter my father was a psychoanalyst so I was interested in both of those things already um but it never occurred to me that you could actually make a living as an artist or have a career as an artist so I started I discovered art history and I started I took his class which I just love and that started me taking more art history classes and then I started writing for the college newspaper and nobody had written our criticism to the college newspaper because the Harvard Crimson was only about the city council meetings and the politics and my class yeah my yeah so my classmates were all we're all um you know they're amazing people really if you look today at who's on the front page is the who has the bylines in the New York Times the Washington Post those are my classmates you know the green house was in on the crimson with me she writes on the court for the New York Times and Bob Samuelson who was an economics commentator for the post for Newsweek and then the post Donnie Graham whose mother owned the Washington Post was the editorial yeah the president of course when I was there so I mean all of my classmates went on to become journalists and I was so naive I just didn't understand how important those connections are and I think if I were you asked me earlier what you know what advice would I give myself at a 20 at 20 you know looking back now I wish I'd understood better how important the relations between people really are that you start to build a network and everything is about personal relations and I definitely will take your advice and but what a fantastic American story and your grandparents and came to this country for the first time as basically refugees and island and then their their song became a professor in a prominent they call analysis then their grandson becomes a very prominent art historian and just absolutely and two quick questions what when you grew up in Chicago as the third generation immigrant basically because your father was born here right so your grandparents was first generation your father parents or second generation your third generation did you feel any different from the other children and obviously English language was your parents first language both it's your first language but do you feel any different and aside from your personality anything but do you feel like you are different from other kids in the neighborhood well when I was a kid you know I lived we lived in an area that was affluent very highly educated and there was a fairly reasonable I mean there's a reasonably sized Jewish population so at first I didn't really notice any difference but then there were other suburbs around me wealthier suburbs around me where some of the parents didn't want their kids playing with a Jewish with a Jew and I didn't I never occurred to me you know so I remember I had one high school friend who I met who we kept making tennis dates and every time I made a tennis date with him his mother would find something else for him to do and it never worked out and finally my father said to me you're going to have to realize that this is never going to happen because his mother doesn't want his wanting him playing with a Jew so there was some of that there was some anti-Semitism but I never really suffered from what I would say you know it just it struck me as so stupid and I just you know I never took it seriously because it seemed stupid and certainly yeah and you couldn't you couldn't possibly go to Harvard and and feel challenged by that because you know the professors and students at Harvard there were so many prominent Jewish faculty and students but I never really encountered that very much in my life although I have to say now with all the violence going along in America it's the first time in my life I ever thought to myself is it possible that they could round up Jews like they did in Hitler's Germany because it feels to me like we're starting to go in that direction yeah fortunately but I as I immigrated myself I never understand the anti-Semitism in this country I just I study history I look at I read articles I talked to my Jewish friends and non-Jewish friends I and everybody gave me different answers what this has happened and why this is happening and nobody really gave me a clear answer what's the rationale obviously there's no logic behind this anti-Semitism we are running out of time what a fantastic American story but I do want to ask you the question and because we talked about you grew up in as a child in Chicago and you published three books about the children's art and one is a theoretical book two more are historian catalogs so when did you begin to pay attention to children's art and one why do you think it's important well you know as I said to you I was never a great reader and I was always interested in visual things that's how I learned and I didn't understand until this point in my life you know all the different styles of learning that people do learn visually instead of verbally some people do and I'm probably one of them so I've always I've always wanted to know what what it is that why it is that images had such a strong claim in my attention and when I was in high school I already was interested in children's drawings I'm not sure why but I think it's because my father was a psychoanalyst and I started reading psychoanalytic psychoanalytic literature as a high school student and when I got to Harvard I started investigating it and I had I had two very formative teachers in college who were really important to me one was Rudolph Arnheim who was a who was a Berlin Jew he had emigrated to the United States during World War II and and he was an expert on children's drawings and on the psychology of art he was kind of the father of the psychology of art definitely he and I ultimately got to be very good friends and published together but so he's you know that was one very important relationship and the other one that was important to me was a man named Eric Erickson who was a psychoanalyst teaching at Harvard and at the time that I knew him he had he was working on a book called Gandhi's truth and the and what he said in Gandhi's truth and in other books that he wrote he created a paradigm which is that you know Gandhi solved his personal emotional problems in public in a way that other people could identify with and that was in Erickson's view that was how ideology forms that you know somebody does this in public it you know that's the beginning of ideology and I thought boy that is the that's the way to explain why a work of art has so much impact on us so it sent me on that trajectory and now I'm at the place where I'm working in neuroscience trying to understand the the actual physiology of the brain on a work of art what happens in creativity and how does creativity work um and how does it get uh transferred and I'm thinking Erickson and Arnhem were essential for me and my father were essential for me to understand those issues definitely I agree totally agree I wrote Arnhem's book was my bible during my college years and I definitely agree with you about the neuroscience part of the art you know the children's art and I love Castle's famous quote that every child was an artist the problem is how to remain it when we grow up well what a fantastic conversation and what a fantastic American history American story of your family your grandparents your parents and yourself thank you so much for for your time professor and and let's just get this as episode one of our oral history book about Feinberg professor Feinberg's you know personal journey and I wish I will have you back on the show to continue to talk about the children's art and other things well thank you again for your time professor today we have a distinguished guest professor Jonathan Feinberg director of a PhD program in creativity at the university of the arts art historian curator my mentor for 22 years and will for at least another 28 years thank you professor thank you thank you for having me it's always great to talk to you likewise aloha thank you so much for watching think tech hawaii if you like what we do please like us and click the subscribe button on youtube and the follow button on vimeo you can also follow us on facebook instagram twitter and linked in and donate to us at think tech hawaii dot com mahalo