Unidentified photographer, Brooklyn Museum Art School class, from left Angela Bing, Dorothy Fuchigami, Marty Berman, and Murray Fresta, 1948. Reproduced from “Students in Sculpture Class Seriously After Careers,” in The Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 12, 1948.

9. Angela Bing Jansen

Life Dates1929-unknown
Place of BirthNew York, NY, USA
Place of Deathunknown
Birth NameAngela Bing

Angela Bing was born in New York City, though information about her early years is very limited.1 After high school, Bing enrolled at Brooklyn College where she graduated in 1951 with a degree in art and design. Simultaneously, she pursued additional art studies at the Brooklyn Museum Art School where she took classes between 1946 and 1949.2 During these years of her training, she expressed a strong desire to pursue a career as an artist. An article in the Brooklyn Daily Eagle about students enrolled in the daytime sculpture classes at the Brooklyn Museum Art School remarked Bing was “certain she has found her true profession.”3 According to the student ledger book Peter Grippe kept, Angela Bing was student at Atelier 17 in the spring of 1952 and received scholarship to cover her tuition and materials.4 That year, she exhibited one of the etchings she produced, Across the River, in the Brooklyn Museum’s Sixth National Print Annual. Another print titled Endless Streets by an artist identified only as “Bing” was in the collection of Stanley William Hayter.5 By 1956, she listed “teaching” as her profession on the occasion of a voyage to Europe. Marrying at some point, she changed her surname to Jansen. Bing Jansen continued her work as a printmaker, joining the Pratt Graphics Center in 1968. In 1972, she won an award from the National Endowment for the Arts and used the grant money to procure her own press to print editions from her home studio.6 Bing Jansen was quite active as a printmaker during the 1970s, making photoetchings and monoprints, which entered major public collections such as the Chicago Art Institute, Metropolitan Museum of Art, and National Gallery of Art (Washington, DC). These prints are described in great detail in Francine Tyler’s profile of Bing Jansen published in Artforum in 1979. Nothing further is known about Angela Bing Jansen’s life.

  • Biographical entry revised February 2021

Selected Bibliography

“Students in Sculpture Class Seriously After Careers.” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 12, 1948.

Tyler, Francine. “Angela Jansen, Printmaker.” Artforum, 17, no. 10 (Summer 1979): 46-49.

Notes

  1. The 1940 census lists Angela Bing, aged 10, living with her mother Jean Bing (widowed) and her maternal family in Crown Heights. *1940 United States Federal Census.* Provo, UT: Ancestry.com Operations, Inc., 2012. ↩
  2. Bing’s attendance at Brooklyn College was confirmed through National Student Clearinghouse. Jennifer Neal, associate archivist at the Brooklyn Museum, confirmed Bing’s attendance in an email to the author, January 30, 2017. ↩
  3. “Students in Sculpture Class Seriously After Careers,” Brooklyn Daily Eagle, November 12, 1948, 17. ↩
  4. Student ledger book, p. 3, Allentown Art Museum/Grippe Collection, Allentown, Penn. ↩
  5. Untitled and undated list, Helen Phillips Papers, Paris, France ↩
  6. Francine Tyler, “Angela Jansen, Printmaker,” Artforum, 17, no. 10 (Summer 1979), 47. ↩