gathering of tapestry artists in Portland, Oregon. Two years later Nezhnie was awarded an honorary Doctorate of Fine Arts for her contribution to art from the University of Missouri, St. Louis. She was already suffering from Alzheimer's disease and the honor coincided with the end of her career in 1992. Home life Nezhnie was the only child of Jean Shiezer Liftman and Isadore Nezhnie. Both parents had children from previous marriages that were 8 or more years older than she. Young Muriel was alone in their apartment until her youngest stepsister came home from school because her mother worked in the store below their living quarters, checking in upstairs at slow moments. Nezhnie began drawing at an early age as a way to entertain herself and was encouraged by her sister who enjoyed drawing. Her childhood was further marred by the death of her father when she was six and then four years later, her sister who had taken care of her died in a freak train accident. [3] At the time, newspapers were publishing photographs of persecuted Jews that had a fundamental influence on Nezhnie. As the child of non-practicing Russian Jewish immigrants living in a non-Jewish neighborhood of Jersey City, New Jersey, she set out to discover what it meant to be a Jew by enrolling herself in a class at the local temple. Acquiring skills Her introduction to weaving happened in a unique manner when she was in sixth grade of school. A teacher wanted the students to use "potholder looms" to create squares that could be joined into blankets to send to the Russian War Relief. The only student who excelled in the weaving, Nezhnie was told to keep on weaving during class and just listen to the lesson until enough squares were made for the blankets. She later recalled that she "learned about ancient Egypt and the Reconstruction period after the Civil War… while industriously making colorful woven squares. During the late 1940s and early 1950s, while taking Saturday art classes in New York City at the Jefferson School of Social Science, Muriel solidified her interest in becoming a portrait artist. Large portraits of Communist dignitaries flanking the wall of the school's hallways made a deep impression on her. However, as a student at The Cooper Union, (1952–1955) she battled the strong bias of that era towards abstraction and was told that she would have