NEWS + MEMBER EXHIBITS
NAWA member, painter Joan Menschenfreund, 83, passed away peacefully recently at a retirement community in Pennsylvania. Joan became a NAWA member in 2017. She painted in oils and watercolor, and in 2022 she won the Helen Stark Andrey Memorial Award at NAWA’s annual exhibition.
Joan Menschenfreund, c. 2020, Ilovetheupperwestside.com
Joan loved cats and created numerous portraits of them, with particular focus on her final cat, Beau. She also created a number of “Outside In” cityscapes during the COVID-19 pandemic, such as the view from her window and another streetscape shown below and featured in 2020 in a neighborhood online publication:
West 86th Street
Joan was a featured NAWA “Artist of the Day” on October 13, 2021, and told NAWA, “I am a born and bred New Yorker who has lived on the Upper West Side for over 50 years. The vibrancy, diversity and life on the streets have kept me here all these years. … I have traveled widely, always taking photographs. Now I use them as inspiration for my paintings. …Although I dabble in different subject matter, I love landscape, including the urban scenes that surround me, and personal, familiar spaces.”
Joan led a purposeful life and had many friends. She had a wonderful eye for the decorative arts and furnished her apartment in the Art Deco style. She was born in the Bronx where she attended Christopher Columbus High School and later graduated from the University of Buffalo.
She was a long-time resident of the Upper West Side in New York City. Joan worked for numerous book publishers and news outlets as a photo editor, including The New York Times Magazine and Time magazine. She retired from Time-Life where she was head of photo research for the book division. In 2023, she moved to Pennswood Village Retirement Community in Pennsylvania. She is survived by her brother, Gerry Mann, who adopted Beau. Joan will be missed.
