Bennett Cooperman & Meryl Nietsch-Cooperman

What We Learned from Aesthetic Realism

  • Meryl Nietsch-Cooperman
    • Eating Disorders
    • Love & Marriage
    • Women’s Issues
  • Bennett Cooperman
    • Actors & the Drama
    • Marriage
    • Men’s Questions
  • Art, Music, Poetry
  • About Us
  • Links

About Us

Bennett Cooperman

bennett-newI’m an Aesthetic Realism consultant and actor, and a graduate of Syracuse University. For many years I was also an internal communications professional working for multi-national companies.

Since 1987, I’ve given consultations with my colleagues to men of all ages. And I take part in seminars at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation on the everyday, urgent questions of men: Indecisiveness in Men—What Is the Cause?; What’s Missing When Husbands Talk to Wives?; and What Makes a Man’s Life Large or Small?

I’m proud to be a cast member in the esteemed Aesthetic Realism Theatre Company, which presents talks given by Eli Siegel on world drama. Included in our repertoire are presentations of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, Othello and A Midsummer Night’s Dream; Moliere’s School for Wives, Sheridan’s School for Scandal and Ibsen’s A Doll’s House.

Meryl Nietsch-Cooperman

meryl-newI am an Aesthetic Realism consultant with the teaching trio There Are Wives, and each month we conduct the Understanding Marriage! workshop in which women learn the basis for a kind, successful marriage.

I’m also a public speaker on issues that concern women, including eating disorders. I’ve given talks at Columbia University, Princeton University, for high school and junior high students and others. Through my study of Aesthetic Realism, ten years of anorexia and bulimia ended in my life, and I’ve been a healthy, happy woman ever since.

Originally from Massapequa, N.Y., I studied art at Parsons School of Design in New York and at Rocky Mountain College in Montana. Topics I’ve spoken about in public seminars at the Aesthetic Realism Foundation include: “Our Greatest Need: What Is It?”; “What’s More Important: To Appreciate Rightly or Be Praised?”; and “Why Are Women Disappointed, and Do We Ever Want to Be?”

We are proud to study in professional classes for Aesthetic Realism consultants and associates, taught by Ellen Reiss, the Chair of Education.

Welcome!

Bennett Cooperman and Meryl Nietsch-Cooperman

We’re proud as husband and wife of 28 years to study and teach Aesthetic Realism, founded in 1941 by Eli Siegel, the American poet and philosopher.

Here you’ll find information about the ways this education has changed our lives—as to love and marriage, the understanding of eating disorders, the art of acting, and the everyday questions of men and women.

Update

I’m very proud to have written the Aesthetic Realism Foundation’s 2024 fundraising letter. In it, I tell some of the great good effect of this education on my life, including as to love, acting, the hope to have big feelings and what opposes that. You can read the letter here.

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Copyright © 2025 by Bennett Cooperman & Meryl Nietsch-Cooperman