Getting close to great artworks, she says, "touches something in a kid, whether they want to dance -- or play basketball. Eventually, you hope they'll reach beyond what they can do, to their community, to images of justice, to more humaneness and vibrancy. You hope you light a fire."
Cathleen Gruen, who was Greene's Columbia teaching assistant for several years, says her openness extends to her daily contact with people. "She's so generous. She deals with everybody in a very respectful way, whether it's a taxi driver or the dean of the college."
These days, Greene teaches her Columbia graduate seminars at her Manhattan apartment.
During one class, the sun was setting on Central Park below as joggers circled the reservoir. Two dozen students packed the living room, spilling off the sofas onto the floor. Greene led a discussion abuzz with trendy topics like the use of iPods to block out the urban subway crush, and whether people are leading "virtual" lives that isolate them by using technology.
At the end of the two-hour graduate seminar, Greene asked, "D'you think it might be a good idea to have some champagne?"
She had turned 87 that day and wanted to share a toast with her youthful students. Many ended up literally kneeling in front of their physically frail but magnetic teacher to tell her how she was shaking up their lives and careers.
On a nearby table lay a technology magazine, keeping Greene abreast of what's new along with newspapers that help her probe everything from shifts in politics to what's happening on the streets of New York.
She remains a realist who insists that every human spirit has the capacity to blossom -- with a little imagination. A foundation she started offers modest financial sponsorship to talented students, as well as new artworks and activism she wants to sustain.
"We cannot repress the memories of the World Trade Center tragedies" -- the lives of men, women and children changed or gone forever, she told a group of educators after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
"But out of the rubble and the panic, we can create new shapes."
