Art Garfunkel

Art History and Mathematics at Columbia

Garfunkel went to Columbia University and graduated with the class of 1965. Accounts of what he studied first do not match. Columbia College Today says he enrolled in the architecture school and then moved to the College to major in art history. The Encyclopaedia Judaica entry gives his bachelor's degree as art history, while Contemporary Musicians says he studied architecture and mathematics. Biography.com and the Judaica entry agree that he later earned a master's degree in mathematics, also at Columbia.

According to Contemporary Musicians, he was working as a math teacher in Connecticut in 1971.

Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M. and the Tom Wilson Remix

Simon and Garfunkel came back together as a folk duo in 1962. Their first album, Wednesday Morning, 3 A.M., came out on Columbia in late 1964 and was ignored. Tom Wilson then remixed "The Sounds of Silence," with drums and bass overdubbed, and it went out again as a single. It reached No. 1 on the Billboard chart in 1965 and sold more than a million copies.

The albums that followed were Sounds of Silence in 1966, Bookends and the soundtrack to The Graduate in 1968, and Bridge Over Troubled Water in 1970. The song "Bridge Over Troubled Water" won Record of the Year and Best Arrangement Accompanying Vocalist(s) at the 13th Grammy Awards. Grammy.com counts Garfunkel as an eight-time Grammy winner. Rolling Stone once called him "the choirboy of pop music," Columbia College Today notes.

Catch-22 and the 1970 Split

Garfunkel played Captain Nately in Catch-22, released in 1970. "Mike Nichols had originally offered a role for Paul in that movie, then Paul's part was dropped," he told People in 2026, in an interview carried by the Australian Associated Press. Simon, in the 2024 documentary In Restless Dreams: The Music of Paul Simon, said the long shoot created an "uneven balance of power" between them and called it "a recipe for the breakup."

Grammy.com, Columbia College Today and the AAP all date the split to 1970. The Encyclopedia.com entry on Simon gives 1971.

Garfunkel kept acting. Carnal Knowledge (1971) brought him a Golden Globe nomination, and he later appeared in Bad Timing (1980), Good to Go (1986), Boxing Helena (1993) and 54 (1998). In 1998 he also had a guest role as a singing moose on the children's series Arthur.

Angel Clare, Breakaway and All I Know

His first solo album, Angel Clare, came out in 1973. That September "All I Know" entered the Billboard Hot 100, and on November 10, 1973, it peaked at No. 9. Billboard lists it as his only solo top 10 hit; he has had no solo No. 1.

The second album, Breakaway, followed in 1975, the year "I Only Have Eyes for You" reached No. 18. In 1978 "(What A) Wonderful World," recorded with James Taylor and Paul Simon, peaked at No. 17. Billboard also lists "Second Avenue" at No. 34 and "I Shall Sing" at No. 38.

Songs From a Parent to a Child, a children's album from 1997, was nominated for a Grammy. Everything Waits to Be Noticed (2002) was made with Maia Sharp and Buddy Mondlock, and in 2008 he was promoting Some Enchanted Evening.

On Foot Across Japan and the United States

Between 1983 and 1997, the Charleston City Paper reported in 2008, Garfunkel crossed both the United States and Japan on foot. He began a walk across Europe in 1998. Biography.com says he wrote poetry along the way, and the prose poems were published in 1989 as Still Water.

He has also kept a list of every book he has read since 1968, with favorites marked by an asterisk. By 2008 it had passed 1,000 titles. The version on his official website runs to entry no. 1375, logged in December 2025, with the lists for 1968 to 2020 stored in 13 PDF files. In 2017 he published an autobiography, What Is It All but Luminous: Notes from an Underground Man.

Central Park in 1981 and the Later Reunions

The duo split up and reunited more than once. The best known reunion was the 1981 Concert in Central Park, which the AAP says drew more than half a million people. They played benefit concerts in 1993, toured again in 2003, and that year received the Recording Academy's Lifetime Achievement Award. The Encyclopaedia Judaica describes the 2003 tour as their first in 20 years.

Simon and Garfunkel were inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame in 1990, with James Taylor giving the induction. Sony puts the duo's sales at more than 100 million records.

The 2010 Vocal Cord Paresis

Garfunkel's voice trouble began in 2010. Biography.com says it started during a performance with Simon at the New Orleans Jazz and Heritage Festival. He was diagnosed with vocal cord paresis, and a run of Simon and Garfunkel dates planned for 2010 was cancelled.

For about a year he stopped singing and almost stopped talking, he told Grammy.com in 2014. "My knees would buckle and I wondered when the voice was going to return," he said. He started again by singing along to James Taylor songs on his iPod. In 2012 he worked with a microphone in an empty auditorium, at a stage when, in his words, "the voice was terrible." That year two new songs, "Lena" and "Long Way Home," produced with Maia Sharp, appeared on the compilation The Singer. He went back to full concerts in 2013. Biography.com puts the whole recovery at about four years and reports that he told Rolling Stone in 2014 he was back to "96%."

Kim Garfunkel and the Brooklyn Botanic Garden

Garfunkel married the architect Linda Marie Grossman in 1972. Biography.com calls it a brief marriage, and it ended in divorce.

He met Kim Cermack on the set of Good to Go, and they married in 1988 at the Brooklyn Botanic Garden. "It all changed," he said of meeting her, in remarks reported by the Daily Beast in June 2026. "That was the end of putting me in the center of my life." In the same report: "I'm crazy about my wife."

They have two sons. The elder, Arthur Garfunkel Jr., is a singer. Then known as James, he sang a duet with his father on Songs From a Parent to a Child in 1997. His album Father and Son came out in 2024.

Who Owns the Simon & Garfunkel Songs

On March 31, 2021, Sony Music Publishing announced that it had bought Paul Simon's entire publishing catalog, which includes the Simon & Garfunkel songs "The Boxer," "Mrs. Robinson," "Sound of Silence" and "Bridge Over Troubled Water." Rolling Stone reported that the price was not disclosed.

A year later, in March 2022, Billboard reported that Simon was shopping his master recording royalties from the five Simon and Garfunkel studio albums made for Columbia from 1964 on. A source told Billboard the offer did not include Garfunkel's share of those royalties. Billboard estimated that the catalog brings in about $8.3 million a year and said the asking price was "in the eight figures." We found no report of how that sale ended, and no record of Garfunkel selling his own share.

A 2025 Dinner and the What a Wonderful World Tour

In a June 2026 interview with People, carried by the AAP, Garfunkel said he and Simon had met for dinner the year before, after years of tension. "We had a dinner last year. It was very lovely. There were tears, there were hugs," he said. On the duo's legacy: "It goes in and out. It's got a summer and a winter." LBC reports that the two are back on good terms but have not performed together since 2010.

That June he was on the road with his What a Wonderful World tour. In October 2026 he postponed all four of his planned UK shows: Watford Colosseum on October 13, Manchester Opera House on October 15, Wolverhampton Civic Hall on October 17 and the Royal Albert Hall in London on October 19. "I have been diagnosed with a respiratory infection, and my doctor has advised me to take some time to rest and recover," he said in a statement. LBC reported that his October dates in Paris and the United States were likely to be rearranged and that new dates had not been announced.

Sources

• Art Garfunkel | Encyclopedia.com
• Art Garfunkel - Songs, Wife & Age
• Here's to You, Mr. Garfunkel | Columbia College Today
• The Return Of Art Garfunkel | Grammy
• Simon and Garfunkel | Rock & Roll Hall of Fame
• Art Garfunkel | Biography, Music & News | Billboard
• VISITING ACT: Art Garfunkel - Charleston City Paper
• Art Garfunkel | Library
• Music Legend Art Garfunkel, 84, Shares Secret to 37-Year Marriage to Kim
• Art Garfunkel and Paul Simon in harmony again | The Canberra Times | Canberra, ACT
• Sony Buys Paul Simon's Publishing Rights
• Paul Simon Selling Simon & Garfunkel Recorded Royalties
• Where was Art Garfunkel set to play on UK tour, why has he postponed and can I get a refund if I cannot make the new date? | LBC