Tillim also assembled two groups of essays for publication. One, "Art after Ideology: Selected Writings, 1959-89," anthologizes thirty years of magazine writing; the other, "The Return of Bad Art: Art in the Age of Mechanical Representation," concerns photography and its impact on and assimilation by fine art in the postmodern twentieth century. Teaching Tillim taught art history, painting, and art criticism at Bennington College for nearly three decades, from 1966 to 1994. At Bennington he became friends with the artist Jules Olitski and the writer Phillip Lopate. In spring 1973 Tillim was appointed visiting Charles A. Dana Professor of Fine Arts at Colgate University, where he debuted The Reception of President-Elect Washington by the Women of Trenton, April 21, 1789 (destroyed 1996)—a painting prompted by the disgraced presidency of Richard Nixon. Book collecting In addition to being an artist and writer, Tillim was an avid book collector. He compiled one collection on 19th-century American art (acquired by Arizona State University) and another on photomechanical reproduction c.1840-1960 (800 objects, acquired by the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art). On the latter subject, he organized two exhibitions (with catalogues), one contemporary and one historical: 1) Photography Reproduction Production/ The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Representation: Richard Artschwager, Ellen Brooks, Joseph Nechvatal, Mark Tansey, Andy Warhol (Bennington College, 1992); and 2) with the photographer David A. Hanson, Photographs in Ink (Fairleigh Dickinson University, 1996). An historical survey of photomechanical printing, from early systems up to three/four-color letterpress halftone, such an exhibition was rare at the time. All 120 items on display were culled from the personal collections of the two curators. Personal Sidney Tillim was the second of three children born to Norman and Anna Tillim (née Cohen), and was raised in an Orthodox Jewish family. The Tillims kept a tavern in Norfolk, Va. His father was a merchant marine, often away from home. (The childhood memory of his father's return after a six-month absence occasioned Tillim's 1979 painting The Return of My Father from Alaska.) His parents divorced in 1941 and, until he went into the Army, the teenage Tillim stayed with relatives in Brooklyn or in a boarding house with his errant father. Much like him, Tillim was a "dude" when it came to dress. (In the photograph at the head of this article, he can be seen in his studio painting in a suit and tie.) Tillim