To Stuart Denenberg ’64—alumnus, artist, poet, director of his own gallery, and generous donor to the Museum of Art—art is not, “a mere artifact,” but “microcosms, magical places to discover ideas, emotions, to enjoy beauty… and to wonder. Works of art are journeys of the imagination.” I would be hard-pressed to find someone who has lived a life filled with more discovery than Stuart. As a Romance Language major and Philosophy minor at Bowdoin, Stuart soon after college found himself starting a printing press while playing tuba for the Portland Maine Symphony, all before finding his way to graduate school for physiology, a subject that he was drawn to despite “never having studied.” Not long thereafter, Stuart worked at an art gallery dealing prints. Stuart was told two weeks into the job to bring an unnamed artist from his hotel in Brooklyn to a department store to pitch some of his prints. Waiting in the hotel lobby, he discovered Salvador Dali walking down the stairs with an ocelot on a chain and a mustache waxed upright. As Stuart, who is “extremely allergic to cats,” talked with Dali, he began having a reaction. After apologizing to the artist for a sneeze due to his allergies, Dali responded, “don’t worry, I love suffering.”

Stuart has an uncanny ability to draw you into a story and tell it to you like you were there, all while somehow impressing an important moral at the end. During my hour-and-a-half conversation, he made me rethink what I was passionate about and how I am pursuing and making the most of my talents. At one point he paused a story to tell me, “Don’t ever work for money, work for passion that feeds you brilliantly.”

Stuart’s inspiring amiability comes from his generosity and his noticeable quest to improve the world around him. When I asked what his advice was to current students at Bowdoin he replied, “A. Vote, B. Vote, C. Vote. Be activists and be completely involved in the political process.” Stuart hopes that art will be used as “a springboard into the future.” It is a tool of intellectual discovery.

 

Brennan Clark , Class of 2020

 

Illustration: Stuart Denenberg with his partner and wife Beverly Bubar Denenberg.