Prologue: You'll never be an artist -- How old are you? -- Leaving my former life -- Getting there -- So much to learn -- Familiar artists, new ways -- Illustration versus the context of art -- Transcription -- Look like an artist -- Drawing -- I could not draw my mother dying -- A bad decision -- Euphoria -- Grief -- Peers -- Crit -- Art school + history history -- You'll never be an artist -- Discovery -- MFA thesis -- And now? -- Newark artist -- Art history by Nell Painter -- Coda: Happy ending

Following her retirement from Princeton University, celebrated historian Dr. Nell Irvin Painter surprised everyone in her life by returning to school--in her sixties--to earn a BFA and MFA in painting. In Old in Art School, she travels from her beloved Newark to the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design; finds meaning in the artists she loves, even as she comes to understand how they may be undervalued; and struggles with the unstable balance between the pursuit of art and the inevitable, sometimes painful demands of a life fully lived. How are women and artists seen and judged by their age, looks, and race? What does it mean when someone says, "You will never be an artist"? Who defines what "An Artist" is and all that goes with such an identity?--from publisher's description