Background
Mary Beth Edelson was born in 1933 in East Chicago, Indiana, United States.
lecturer Photographer conceptual artist
Mary Beth Edelson was born in 1933 in East Chicago, Indiana, United States.
Mary Beth Edelson received a Bachelor of Arts from DePauw University in Greencastle, Indiana (1955), and a Master of Arts from New York University in New York City (1958).
Since 1971 Mary Beth Edelson has been giving many lectures and workshops and organizing panels and performances throughout the country. In 1979 she was a visiting artist at Chico University in California and in 1978 an artist-in-residence at Iowa University's Multi-Media Department and at San Jose State University in California.
During the second half of the 1950s Mary Beth Edelson became active in the emergent feminist movement as well as the civil rights movement. In 1968 she established the country's first Conference for Women in the Visual Arts in Washington. From 1992 and 1994 Mary Beth Edelson was involved in the leadership of the Committee on Diversity and Inclusion and the Women's Action Coalition.
Quotations: "My involvement with the photograph began as a means to an end; the concept or idea leads the way. The open-ended possibilities of photography, i.e., multiplicity of choices, instant accessibility to content, coilaging, juggling sequences, and later the manipulation of perceived reality to register as information what our eyes and mind tell us cannot happen - all helped to rivet me to the medium."
Mary Beth Edelsonhad two children: a daughter from her second marriage and a son from her third marriage to Alfred H. Edelson, the CEO of Rytex. Robert Stackhouse, also an artist, lived with Mary Beth Edelson for 27 years in her live/work loft in Soho following the end of her third marriage.