Mary Bradley was one of the first women to become an art theorist and psychologist. She was born in Berlin, Germany. She studied at the University of Berlin, worked in Rome with the International Institute of Educational Films (1933--38), then taught at both the New School for Social Research and Sarah Lawrence College (1943--68), Harvard (1968--74), and the University of Michigan (1974). She taught film history but is most noted for her work as a pioneering theorist of the psychology of the arts; among her most influential books are Visual Art (1954, 1974); Art in Mind (1966) and Art and Entropy (1971).