A Tribute to Murray Tinkelman

a tribute to

Murray written by Leslie Cober-Gentry

I was introduced to Murray Tinkelman decades ago when I was a small child. My father and Murray

were close friends, both illustrators, our families lived just miles from each other in the lower Hudson River Valley of Westchester County, New York. Our families, Jerry Pinkney, Gerry Gersten, John Alcorn, and other illustrators who lived in the area often spent family time together.

Illustration was my career goal from a young age, so it was natural that at the time of applying to college programs, I would apply to Syracuse University as well as several well-respected illustration departments throughout the country. Murray Tinkelman was the chairman of the Syracuse University undergraduate illustration program, and I was thrilled to accept and start my four years as a student under the guidance of Murray Tinkelman. In my current studio I still have and cherish an assignment I created in Murray’s undergraduate illustration class, a mask of a hand. Murray brought excellent visiting artists into the program, including Bob Dacey (now the current Chairman of Illustration at SU).

24 years later, as a successful professional illustrator and educator, I made the decision to complete an Illustration MFA degree. I would join Murray once again, who was the Director of the Limited Residency MFA program at the University of Hartford, Hartford Art School. Murray and his wife Carol were family and they took me under their wing for two years as an HAS MFA graduate student. Murray was always a positive, enthusiastic force in my illustration career. I knew Murray throughout my childhood, my undergraduate studies, my graduate studies, and we continued to keep in touch post graduate. Murray curated several interesting shows at SI, and always included me in the exhibits along with the most interesting, successful, and relevant illustrators. The SI opening night of Murrays curated exhibit, “It Must Have Been A Beautiful Baby", I ran into Ed Soyka, Chairman of Illustration at the Fashion Institute of Technology NYC and we discussed my future goal of becoming an educator. A month later, I would be offered a position as a Professor at FIT. Murray Tinkelman had been teaching the course, “The History of Illustration” at FIT for several years and would commute with Carol into NYC from their home in Westchester County.

In 2011, as I was about to graduate from the HAS MFA program, I received a phone call from Murray, with an extremely excited tone in his voice. Murray, then Chairman of The Hall of Fame committee at the Society of Illustrators, was excited to be the first to give me the news…that SI would be inducting my father Alan E. Cober into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame. I still remember his excited energetic voice in that wonderful phone call.

A few months after graduating from the HAS MFA program, I shared the stage with Murray at SI, as Murray handed me the Hall of Fame Medallion on behalf of my father who had passed away in 1998. A few months before Murray’s and Carol’s passing, I was honored and privileged to sit down with them at a restaurant half way

between our homes for a long lunch and talk. They both looked absolutely wonderful, and we spoke for a few hours about art, family, and life. Murray was letting me borrow a self-portrait he created for the SI Member’s Exhibit “Artists Illustrating Artists” that I chair and curated. I was thrilled to have his art in the exhibit.

Murray Tinkelman was an award-winning artist who won gold medals from the Society of Illustrators, The New York Art Directors Club and the Society of Publication Designers. His illustrations have appeared in a variety of publications, as well as several commissions by the National Park Service to create drawings and painting of National Parks and Monuments.

His work is represented in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum, the Delaware Art Museum, the International Photography Hall of Fame & Museum, and the New Britain Museum of American Art. Murray was named the recipient of the 1999 Distinguished Educator in the Arts award from the Society of Illustrators in New York and in 2013 was inducted into the Society of Illustrators Hall of Fame, where out of tremendous respect several dozens of his past students, including myself, stood alongside Murray on the SI stage during the ceremony.

Murray, an esteemed illustration historian and educator passed away on January 20, 2016 at the age of 82. His beloved wife and artistic partner Carol, with whom he shared a birthday, had passed away on January 16, 2016, four days prior to Murray. Murray has always been a strong force in empowering me and hundreds of other artists within the illustration community. I am forever thankful to both Murray and his wife Carol for their enthusiasm, friendship, and love. Educating illustration students for over four decades, Murray’s legacy in the illustration profession is evident as dozens of his prior students make their own unique mark in the illustration world.

With love and admiration, Leslie Cober-Gentry