Together, they’re keeping art in the picture

For the past 30 years, generations of Riverdalians have helped safeguard arts education in public schools across the Bronx and Upper Manhattan.

In 1982, Electra Askitopoulos-Friedman and Muriel Silberstein-Stofer founded Doing Art Together, which has grown into a non-profit organization that annually teaches studio courses to 200,000 children who would otherwise receive little or no visual art education in their public schools.

The pair met in 1972 while leading parent-child workshops at the Metropolitan Museum of Art as part of a program founded by Ms. Silberstein-Stofer. 

They both led painting, drawing, college work and gallery tours. They began offering free workshops for parents and children at PS 6, located across the street from the Met, and invited PS 86 students in Kingsbridge Heights to the City University of New York’s Lehman College campus for studio classes.

In 1982, Ms. Silberstein-Stofer authored Doing Art Together, which became a guide for the non-profit organization that grew out of it, according to Ms. Askitopoulos-Freidman, who is still involved with Doing Art Together and still teaches at the Met.

“It was named after the Chinese Proverb, ‘What I hear, I forget. What I see, I remember. What I do, I know.’ I love that. It’s so true for kids,” she said. She said that she and Ms. Silberstein-Stofer were heavily influenced by the multicultural philosophy of Ethical Culture Fieldston School, where Ms. Silbertsein-Stofer’s mentor Victor D’Amico led the art department and Ms. Askitopoulos-Freidman’s children attended school. “We include parents because really parents are a child’s first teacher.”

By 1985, Doing Art Together had expanded into all five boroughs. It received its non-profit certification in 1987. Doing Art Together’s headquarters moved out of the Met in 2003 when the museum was remodeled. It relocated to the Manhattan Jewish Community Center, then to a space near Columbus Circle, and finally to Harlem, where it now operates on a $350,000 to $400,000 annual budget with about ten art instructors, assistants and interns. 

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