Brandeis Magazine

Carl Belz, of Arlington, Massachusetts, who helped establish the Rose Art Museum as the area’s leading museum of modern and contemporary art, died of a heart attack on Aug. 28, 2016. He joined the Brandeis faculty in the 1960s and led the Rose from 1974-98. As director of the Rose, Carl showed the work of female artists at a time when few museums did so. Among the notable exhibitions Carl organized were a review of the early work of abstract expressionist painter Helen Frankenthaler and Herbert W. Plimpton’s collection of realist art. He also taught courses on contemporary art and a seminar-style class on museum studies. Carl grew up in New Jersey and attended Princeton. He planned to attend medical school at Columbia University but changed his career path after taking a painting course, and went on to earn a master’s and a PhD in art history at Princeton. He taught at UMass Amherst and Mills College, in Oakland, California, before coming to Brandeis. Carl leaves his wife, Barbara; daughters Portia, Melissa, Gretchen and Emily; siblings Dorothy, Elsie and Herman; and five grandchildren. Rachel McCulloch, of Lexington, Massachusetts, the Rosen Family Professor of International Finance Emerita, died on June 18, 2016, after a long illness. After earning a doctorate at the University of Chicago, she taught at Harvard and the University of Wisconsin-Madison. In 1987, she joined the Brandeis faculty as a tenured full professor, and two years later was appointed to the Rosen Family Chair. A leading figure in the field of international trade and economic policy, she published more than 100 papers, served as a consultant to the World Bank and the Asian Development Bank, and was a member of the Presidential Commission on Industrial Competitiveness. Two years ago, she received the Carolyn Shaw Bell Award, given annually to an individual who has furthered the status of women in the economics profession. At Brandeis, she directed the PhD program in international economics and finance for seven years, and also served a term as chair of the economics department. She leaves her husband, Gary; her sister, Linda; her daughter, Laura; and four grandchildren. Myron Rosenblum, of Lexington, Massachusetts, a chemistry professor who helped establish Brandeis as a leading research institution during his four decades on the faculty, died on Jan. 29, 2016. In 1958, he joined the Brandeis faculty, and two years later was promoted to associate professor. He went on to become a full professor and then the Charles A. Breskin Professor of Chemistry. He continued to be an active researcher even after his retirement in 1997. The Myron Rosenblum Endowed Fellowship, established by one of his former students, Tony Chang, PhD’83, testifies to the great affection and admiration he earned from students. Myron did his doctoral work at Harvard under the eminent chemist Robert Burns Woodward, and then returned to Columbia for a year, before accepting an appointment as assistant professor at the Illinois Institute of Technology. He leaves his wife, Rachel; his children, Miriam, Jonathan and Leah; and five grandchildren. Gifts in Myron’s memory may be made to the Myron Rosenblum Endowed Fellowship, Brandeis University, Institutional Advancement, c/o Ruth Aronson, 415 South St., MS 122, Waltham, MA 02454-9110. Gifts may also be made online at giving.brandeis.edu. Robert Szulkin, of North Falmouth, Massachusetts, a professor emeritus of Russian literature who taught at Brandeis from 1962 until his retirement in 2000, died on March 6, 2016. Before becoming an academic, he worked as a newspaper reporter for The Boston Globe, covering Nikita Khrushchev’s trip across the United States. He also worked as a translator, a trucker’s assistant, a lathe operator, a salesman of women’s apparel and a copyboy. A Holocaust survivor, he had little formal schooling before enrolling at BU as an undergraduate and at Harvard as a PhD candidate. He wrote scholarly works on Gogol, Olesha, Kazakov and Okudzhava, as well as numerous translations. He was also a longtime chair of the Department of German and Russian, a dean of students and director of the Sakharov Archives. Beloved by students and colleagues, he was the second person to win the Jeanette Lerman-Neubauer ’69 Prize for Excellence in Teaching and Mentoring. Robin Feuer Miller, the Edytha Macy Gross Professor of Humanities, once heard him tell his students, “My job is to talk to you for 30 minutes. Your job is to listen. If you finish first, raise your hand.” According to Robin, no one ever did. He leaves his wife, Sylvia; his sons, Daniel and David; his sister, Elizabeth; and three grandchildren. Read remembrances of Robert here. Aileen Ward, of Santa Monica, California, a former Brandeis professor whose biography of the Romantic poet John Keats won a National Book Award in 1964, died on May 31, 2016. She spent nine years researching “John Keats: The Making of a Poet,” the first major account of Keats’ life in 40 years. In addition to teaching at Brandeis, Aileen was also a member of the faculty at Wellesley, Barnard, Vassar, Sarah Lawrence and New York University.