Robert Berlind was a painter and art critic who reviewed both regional and international exhibitions, traveling to American cities beyond New York as well as to Western Europe and Japan. His interest was in accounting for his first-hand experience of art works through describing their particular vitality, formal and otherwise, and contextualizing them historically.
Berlind wrote for Art in America, BorderCrossings, the Brooklyn Rail, and other publications. He published pieces on Katherine Bradford and Gerald Ferguson for Art in America, reviews of Donna Dennis, Thomas Nozkowski, and Stephen Westfall for the Brooklyn Rail, and a catalogue essay on Robert Kushner. He was a professor emeritus of the School of Art+Design, Purchase College, State University of New York, where he taught from 1979 to 2007. Before that he was director of the graduate program at the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. He received the American Academy and Institute of Arts and Letters Award in Painting, the B. Altman Award in Painting at the National Academy, as well as grants from the National Endowment for the Arts and the Pollock-Krasner Foundation.