Born in Canada and raised in Dallas, Nancy Cohen Israel honed her love of art and art history through her lifetime of visiting museums in North Texas. After completing her Masters Degree in Art History in Washington, D.C. she returned home to serve as the McDermott Intern in Education at the Dallas Museum of Art. This was followed by an introduction into the contemporary art world during a four-year stint as the director of the Edith Baker Gallery. Fusing her interests in art education and contemporary art, she founded Art à la Carte in 1997 as an art education based company. Over the past 30 years, she has taught at colleges and museums throughout the Dallas area, including at the Meadows Museum where she is currently the Manager of Docent Programs. As a regular contributor to Patron magazine, Nancy covers the visual and performing arts in North Texas and beyond. Her work has also been published locally in Glasstire, VisitDallas, FD Luxe and Arts + Culture as well as nationally in artltd. and Lilith. Nancy’s work has also been featured in exhibition catalogues for galleries across the state.
Nancy has served as a juror and/or curator for exhibitions such as the DADA/ Edith Baker Art Scholarship Awards, Art on Henderson, Craighead-Green Gallery’s New Texas Talent, the Creative Art Center’s Art in the City, and the Texas Sculpture Association’s Bare Essentials, among others. She served as guest curator for View from the Art Village: 50-Year Retrospective, in honor of the University of Dallas’ 50th anniversary of the Braniff Graduate School.
Nancy advanced Art à la Carte’s art educational mission through her highly popular tour series, Second Saturdays, in which she organized and led art enthusiasts to local venues as well as to dynamic contemporary art destinations throughout Texas.
A graduate of The University of Texas at Austin, Nancy earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Humanities, concentrating on Late Medieval art and literature in Northern Europe. She earned her Master of Arts Degree in Art History from The George Washington University in Washington, D.C., where her area of concentration was Renaissance painting. While still in graduate school, she worked as an exhibition coordinator at The Trust for Museum Exhibitions, a nonprofit organization devoted to organizing international traveling art exhibitions. Since her return to Dallas in 1991, she has enjoyed having a front row seat, watching the local contemporary art scene continue to grow.