David Berman, a filmmaker, gallerist, and philanthropist, died Monday, September 16, 2024, in Austin.
Mr. Berman was born in Brooklyn on May 13, 1946. In 1964, he and his family moved to Houston, where he spent his senior year at Lamar High School. He earned a degree in Radio, TV, and Film from the University of Texas in Austin. During his time at UT, he ran Cinema 40, an on-campus film society. Also at UT, Mr. Berman met his life partner, Ellen Trew. The couple married in 1968 and, following graduation, moved to New York for a year before returning to Austin.
Ultimately, the pair moved to Houston, when Mr. Berman took a position at an NBC affiliate there. After five years in that job, he opened Berman Films, a commercial film production company. Through this business, he directed independent feature films, documentaries, corporate and public service projects for arts and nonprofit organizations, as well as commercials for regional and national brands. One of his best-known films is The Strange Demise of Jim Crow, a documentary that features interviews with Civil Rights activists involved in the integration of Houston.
In 1997, the Bermans moved to Wimberley, and in 2000 Mr. Berman opened dberman Gallery in Austin. In a 2004 Austin Chronicle article, Mr. Berman remarked, “I felt that Austin didn’t have a lot of good quality galleries, at least the kind of galleries I was used to growing up in New York and living in Houston.”
The gallery opened in the former space of Galería Sin Fronteras, a Chicano-focused space founded by Gilberto Cárdenas, at 1701 Guadalupe Street. During the 10 years that the gallery was open, it showcased contemporary regional painting, sculpture, and photography. Some of the artists who exhibited at dberman include Ellen Berman, Malcolm Bucknall, Faith Gay, George Krause, Catherine Lee, Lauren Levy, and Beverly Penn.
Bale Creek Allen, an artist and gallerist who lived in the Austin area for many years, remembered Mr. Berman fondly. He told Glasstire, “David Berman was a great supporter of contemporary art in Texas. I was a young artist living in Austin in the early 1990s and had Gallery 68 and a studio at Flatbed World Headquarters. When I moved to Wimberley for a brief time, I approached David about doing a solo show of my own work. He didn’t hesitate and was so gracious and accommodating! dBerman was the best Gallery in Austin for quite a while. David was a well respected, honest, hard-working art dealer and collector, and he was also a sweet man and a good friend to so many.”
Beyond his legacy in the film industry and art world, Mr. Berman was also a champion of human rights, environmental causes, and medical research into neurological diseases.
