Alice M. Schwartz papers

Alice Matilda Schwartz (1918-2002) was born on 7 September 1918 in Salina, Kansas. She was a 1937 graduate of Ward-Belmont Junior College in Nashville, Tennessee and a graduate of Kansas University in Lawrence, Kansas, with a bachelor's degree in fine arts and a master's degree in art. Following graduation, she taught design at Kansas University for two years. In the 1940s she received a Fulbright scholarship for study at Landesschule in Hamburg, Germany. In the 1950s she received a Fulbright fellowship to serve as an educational media consultant for Korea. In 1960, she received her doctorate degree in art education from Pennsylvania State University. She was a pioneer in education television for children. Several years prior to the establishment of WPSX-TV, she was one of the producers and hosts of "Key to the Cupboard," a weekly live television program emanating from Pennsylvania State University but broadcast from Altoona. Later, as an associate professor at Southern Illinois University, she wrote and produced the television series "Art and You."

She returned to Pennsylvania State University to teach and serve as the project director for a 60-program television series, "Meaning in Art," for the schools of Pennsylvania. In the 1950s, she received a Fulbright fellowship to serve as an educational media consultant for Korea. She also spent a term at the Center for Experimental Television in San Francisco. She was project director of a national television series "Images and Things" produced by the Association on Educational Television. Schwartz was appointed to the Penn State faculty as an associate professor of art education in 1965 and attained full professorship in 1970. For twenty years Schwartz made monthly visits to Rockview penitentiary in Pleasant Gap, Pennsylvania, to worship with the inmates. She also taught art classes there and, for several years, organized an annual art exhibit of inmate's work. In 1985 she retired as Professor Emerita of art education and continued to teach as a volunteer at Our Lady of Victory School in State College, Pennsylvania. On 1 June 1992 she married Edward L. Mattil, former director (after Viktor Lowenfeld) of the department of art education at Penn State. Dr. Alice Matilda Schwartz Mattil died on 4 September 2002 at the age of 83.