Marcella Brenner papers

Marcella Brenner was born Baltimore and received a two-year diploma in 1929 from Maryland State Teachers College, now Towson University, and an undergraduate degree from Johns Hopkins University in 1934. She taught in the Baltimore public schools from 1930 to 1944, and received a master's degree in sociology from American University in 1949. From 1945 to 1952, she was a writer and editor for the U.S. Public Health Service. Returning to public education, she was a teacher and then principal at Lone Oak Elementary School in Rockville from 1952 to 1964.

In 1964, she received a PhD in Education from George Washington University and subsequently joined the faculty as an instructor. In 1974, she founded the Museum Education Program at George Washington University. She retired as director of the program in 1983 but continued to advise and instruct students in the program until 2007. In 1971, Ms. Brenner founded the Program for Innovative Teaching (the Keren) in Israel, designed to provide individual classroom teachers with funds not normally available to them in the school budget. She also supported the Bezalel Academy of Art and Design in Jerusalem.

She contributed art works by her late husband Morris Louis, the well-known Washington colorist, to museums around the world. She founded the Morris Louis Scholarship to support art students at George Washington University and was a benefactor of the Maryland Institute College of Art, her husband's alma mater. At Jewish Social Services, she taught English to Russian immigrants and established the Brenner Escort Service Fund to transport people to and from doctor's appointments and take notes of the doctor's instructions. An avid reader who loved mystery novels, she was a member of two long-standing book clubs, as well.

Marcella Brenner passed away on Decemeber 25, 2007, in Silver Spring, MD.