David W. Ecker is Professor Emeritus of Art and Art Education at New York University. A veteran of the Korean War, he was trained as an artist and art teacher at Albright Art School and State University College at Buffalo. An M.S. Degree in Art Education was completed at University of Wisconsin in 1957, and the Ed.D. in History and Philosophy of Education was received in 1962 from Wayne State University. He was a post-doctoral research fellow at Stanford University in 1966-67

Dr. Ecker has taught at all levels from elementary school on, including eight years as faculty member of the School of Art at The Ohio State University. While there he was director of a research and development team for improving the teaching of art appreciation in secondary schools as well as a summer institute for advanced study in phenomenological aesthetics, art history, and art criticism. Both projects were federally funded. In 1963-67 he was co-editor of Studies In Art Education.

For twenty-nine years Dr. Ecker taught courses at N.Y.U. in research and philosophy of art and art education. His continuing professional concern is in helping art teachers develop effective approaches to instruction and curriculum planning in the arts, especially in response to the child's capacity for aesthetic inquiry. His own research on this topic and his experience as aesthetic education consultant to schools, colleges, and federal agencies, and his participation in many conferences of the National Art Education Association have resulted in over two-hundred articles, reports, and several books. Publications include Qualitative Evaluation In The Arts (N.Y.U.); Pioneers in Perception: A Study of Aesthetic Perception: Conversations with Arnheim, Gibson Goodman, Schaefer­Simmer, and Sherman. (CEMREL, Inc.), with Stanley Madeja; "Multiple Perception Analysis: a Convergence Model for Evaluating Arts Education" with Terry Baker, in Studies In Art Education: "Cultural Identity, Artistic Empowerment, and the Future of Art in the Schools," Design for Arts in Education.

As adviser of N.Y.U.'s doctoral program, Dr. Ecker has worked with students from many countries. One consequence of this involvement was his creation of the International Society for the Advancement of Living Traditions in Art (ISALTA). Students have completed field research in Japan, Korea, China, Malaysia, Tibet, Jordan, Afghanistan, Nigeria, Cuba, Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Brazil as well as in the U.S. His own field research as an artist-blacksmith in India while on sabbatical leave resulted in an international symposium on Damascus steel held in New York City on June 27-28, 1985. Co-directed by Dr. G. N. Pant of the National Museum, New Delhi, this meeting on the bladesmith's art was sponsored by N.Y.U.) the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and ISAL T A. Members of the Society are artist­researchers concerned not only to preserve and nurture those arts in danger of being lost but also to promote muti-cultural art education in both "third world" and industrialized societies.