Deceased March 29, 2022
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In Memory
Margaret Rose (Cohen) Vendryes joined the class of 1984 as a burgeoning art historian and mother of two. Just seven years older than many classmates, she was fully formed through an intense humanism that cohered her acute eye, life experience, personal bearing and kindness. We were drawn to Margaret for her profound wisdom and friendship. She credited her academic work at Amherst with propelling her professionally. Margaret was a prescient scholar, even as an undergraduate. Her senior thesis was on 20th-century African American painter Archibald John Motley Jr., whose work first entered the Museum of Modern Art collection in 2021. In 1997, Margaret became the first Black Ph.D. in Princeton’s 115-year-old Department of Art and Archaeology.
Margaret lectured and taught at Amherst, Boston University, Princeton and Wellesley. She chaired the Department of Performing and Fine Arts at CUNY’s York College and was, at her death, poised to become dean of the School of the Museum of Fine Arts at Tufts. As an artist, Margaret began a multimedia and multiyear project, the African Diva Series, in 2005.
Since spring 2020, 12 women from our class have gathered regularly on Zoom. It began as a check-in during the pandemic’s worst days and evolved into a joyful gathering of friends. We forged a renewed sisterhood, reflected on our hopeful and perilous world, and shared memories of Amherst. Margaret was a beautiful member of this group. Some of us got to know her during this time, while the authors below knew her well since college.
Though shocked and heartbroken to learn of her death on March 29, 2022, we are deeply grateful to have had the privilege to reconnect with Margaret over these last two years. We express our deepest sympathies to her sons, Damian and Erick Cohen, and her wife, Jacqueline Herranz Brooks.
Brooke Kamin Rapaport ’84 and the Rev. Marie Tatro ’84