An occasional look at former Loomis Chaffee community members whose work helped shape the school: Walter and Marilyn Rabetz. 

When the plans for the Richmond Art Center were approved, the architectural firm took the time to write a letter to Walter and Marilyn Rabetz.   

“Reviewing the approved plans back at the office ... has again underscored the importance of your efforts in planning and research which have, in our opinion, raised this project to a level of integration of form and function which very few achieve,” read part of the letter.  

Of course, very few achieved what Marilyn and Walter Rabetz did during their long careers at Loomis Chaffee. 

That letter, dated September 14, 1990, was from Stecker LaBau Arneill McManus Architects Inc. The Richmond Art Center — the RAC — would open two years later with its separate studios for different art forms, its student gallery, its lecture hall, and the Sue and Eugene Mercy Jr. Gallery.  

Art, to Walter and Marilyn, was something to be taught, practiced, discussed, and open to all. They had traveled to other schools to figure out what did and did not work, and the new building had what was envisioned: form and function. 

The 1992–93 annual report said of the RAC: “On the outside the building incites discussion. Most people are drawn to its innovative use of disparate materials and its evocative echoing of other campus architectural elements. But, certainly, all seem to respond similarly to the warm, embracing, elegant, and humanly scaled interior. It is neither imposing nor frightening but, rather, welcoming and enabling.” 

And at the door was Marilyn.  

“Running the building was a wonderful experience after working in the Evelyn Longman studio for over 20 years,” Marilyn, now retired, said recently by email from Valhalla, N.Y. “The RAC was so much larger and so full of different classrooms and art materials and experiences. And such a wonderful gallery where we had some very well-known artists exhibit, such as Sol Lewitt.” 

The RAC is named for Howard Richmond ’35. Walter and Marilyn taught his children and grandchildren. Walter died in 2019 in New York, where Marilyn still lives.  

The Rabetzes enabled many students — no matter their level of art expertise — to find another part of themselves. He started working at Loomis in 1970, taught photography, spent 37 years as head of the visual arts department, and was the director of the Mercy Gallery from its opening in 1995 until he retired from teaching in 2007. She was an art teacher from 1970 to 2007, directed the Visiting Artist Program and the Richmond Art Center. 

Both Walter and Marilyn exhibited their work at Loomis and elsewhere. And both earned praise during their time here — from the 1970s to their retirements — and still do to this day. 

A June 1991 letter from the parents of Laura Lutsk Newsom ’91 to Marilyn opened with, “We searched after Commencement but, unfortunately, were not able to locate you. We could not let Commencement slip by without a word of thanks for all that you have done.” The man’s daughter was, he wrote, a good student and athlete who on occasion liked to draw and sketch. “Your assistance in helping [Laura] understand her abilities and to express her artistic talent has been one of the most significant things that has happened to her at Loomis Chaffee. While she is justifiably proud of her academic and athletic accomplishments, there is no question that the highlight of her senior year was her participation in the art show. That show legitimized her as an artist and recognized, in her mind, an ability that is solely hers. It is not dependent on teammates and opponents, but only on what is within her.”   

The Rabetzes had a way of drawing out the artistic side in their students. Marilyn said she remembers how “hard-working and adventurous the students were.” 

“I loved doing ‘crits’ (from critique not criticism) when we put the work on the board and talked about each piece,” she said. “At first it scared the students, but when they realized it was only about making things better, they dove into the conversations with eagerness and enthusiasm.”  

Walter’s students long remembered his impact, too. 

Keith Raphael ’74 approached the school in 2023 about an exhibit that would honor Walter’s influence and celebrate the journeys of students from the Classes of 1974 and 1975 who went on to careers in professional photography. That exhibit, “50 Years of Photography: An Historic Group Photography Exhibit Dedicated to Walter Rabetz,” was on display in the Sue and Eugene Mercy Jr. Gallery in May and June of 2024, including Reunion Weekend. The exhibiting photographers were Keith, Bruce Hamilton ’74, Peter Kagan ’75, Just Loomis ’75, Ted Morrison ’75, and John Sutton ’74.  

Asked last year what Walter might have said if he had seen the exhibit, Keith said, “Well, Walter was very proud of being a teacher and would be ecstatic and honored to be recognized in such a unique event. … He would probably say to each of us in one way or another, ‘I knew you could do it. I knew that if you followed your heart, you would achieve great work.’"    

At Reunion Weekend 2025 in June, Walter’s name once again came up. Peter Kagan gathered many from the Class of 1975 for what he called “Held in Time,” a series of portraits created during their 50th Reunion. “Each classmate was photographed holding their original 1975 yearbook portrait, echoing the pose and presence of their younger self,” wrote Peter in June as an explanation of the work. “This project is both an act of remembrance and of re-seeing — a meditation on time, identity, and connection. Fifty years later, I found myself not only reunited with old friends, but in some cases, engaging with people for the first time. Photography, which I first discovered at Loomis under the guidance of my teacher Walter Rabetz, became the bridge across these decades. This work is dedicated to him.” 

Walter had encouraged him along the way not only in photography but in applying to the Rhode Island School of Design (RISD), where Walter had done graduate studies. “Walter was completely right, for I discovered myself as a whole person at RISD,” Peter said.  “I had a chance to return to Loomis and thank Walter in the late ’80s.” 

Like all Loomis Chaffee arts faculty, Walter and Marilyn were not only teachers; they were working artists. “The fact that Walter and I were serious, exhibiting, and selling artists was extremely important to us,” Marilyn said. “We were artists first and teachers second because that was how we knew what and how to teach. We also published over 30 books of our own work and that of others and a major ‘how to draw’ book called Object Lessons.”     

In 1984, 50 black-and-white photographs by Walter of various bridges that span the Connecticut River from near the Canadian border to Old Saybrook, Conn., and 12 large drawings in colored pencil by Marilyn made up an exhibit in the Fisher Gallery of the Farmington Valley Arts Center in Avon, Conn., just miles from campus. 

That same year The Hartford Courant wrote a story on a group of professional photographers called the “Photo Bunch,” whose work was being shown in Hartford in an exhibit titled “A Bunch of Pictures by a Bunch of People.” Walter was co-founder of the group.   

The reporter asked how “a funny-sounding word” like bunch was chosen as name for the group and exhibit. “Well,” Water replied, “we’re very serious about coming together and sharing our ideas and our experiences and discussing one another’s work. But we thought ‘bunch’ was a good word to use to describe our group because it’s serious, but light, as opposed to being pretentious and empty. We didn’t want to get saddled with your typically bombastic arts group’s name — something like the Southern New England Artists Cooperative Inc. We’re a loose, informal group — no dues, no officers, and no attendance taken. We’re democratic — not one of our 25 or 30 members wants to become the archduke.”   

In a March 2006 interview in ARTIS Magazine, the author wrote that what motivates Walter and Marilyn’s work was different. “While I am working, I go to a place I can’t get to any other way — using a part of my brain I don’t use in any other way,” Marilyn was quoted as saying. “It is communing with a part of me I don’t have access to unless I am working. It is physical and spiritual at the same moment.” For Walter, the author said, the motivation was to bring a concept to life. “I have an idea and I have to pursue it,” he told the author. “Pursuing it gives birth to it — just having the idea doesn't do anything. I work it through and produce some actual event — objects, art — and it validates one’s being.” 

 

Marilyn wrote an article for American Artist in 1985 about being drawn back to drawing. She was a painter and a potter, too. Later, she also taught computer graphics.   

“When I entered art school, I knew I liked to draw, but I didn’t know what to do with that feeling,” Marilyn wrote in the article. “At the time the preponderant attitude was that drawing was something you did in preparation for something else. Although we studied great drawings of the past, somehow it was assumed that we wouldn't ever use drawing as an end to itself. Surely, they said, you want to paint. Surely, they said, work on paper was an inadequate substitute for oil on canvas.”  

Marilyn is a nationally known colored pencil artist with a long exhibition history. For the past two years she has been drawing colored pencil portraits. The description of Marilyn under her portrait on the first floor in Founders Hall speaks of her taking students from “looking” to truly “seeing.” And if they looked at her and Walter, what they saw was a combined 75 years of passion as both teachers and working artists. Devoted to students and each other. They met in 1963 at Brooklyn College. In her book, Love, Luck & ELEPHANTS, Marilyn included a love poem she wrote to Walter.    

“A life in the arts,” Marilyn said, “made us happy, first of all. It also made us sensitive to everything around us and to the people we lived and worked with. We were so very fortunate to have art and to have each other. We were so involved in each other’s work and ideas, and we loved each other so much.”