Yale School of Art Commemorates 150th Year
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Animation: Ben Ganz '17, Bryce Wilner '18, Christine Zavesky '18, Dirk Wachowiak '05, Emma Gregoline '19, Hrefna Sigurardottir '18, Joao Doria '14, Julian Bittiner '08 and Senior Critic in Graphic Design, Kyla Arsadjaja '20, Laura Coombs '17, Martin Bek '16, Matthew Carter, Senior Critic in Graphic Design, Matthew Wolff '18, Moonsick Gang '16, Nate Pyper '18, Stefan Thorsteinsson '13, Tif Hockin '13, Tim Ripper '15, Sean Kuhnke '14, Shira Inbar '14, Willis Kingery '19, Weiyi Li '12, Yotam Hadar '15.
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The start of the 2019-2020 academic year marks the 150th anniversary of the Yale School of Art, which opened for its first day of classes on October 15, 1869. The first university arts institution in the United States, the School of Art was also the first Yale school to admit women and has done so since its founding. This was due in large part to the generosity of philanthropists Augustus and Caroline Street, whose bequest stipulated that the School be for “practical instruction, open to both sexes, for such as propose to follow art as a profession.”
To commemorate this sesquitennial, the Yale School of Art commissioned Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, Caroline M. Street Professor of Graphic Design, Director of Graduate Studies in Graphic Design, and a 1964 alumnus of the Graphic Design program, and Laura Coombs, 2017 Graphic Design alumnus and Senior Designer at the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York, to create an anniversary mark that both celebrates and conveys the profound history of the School.
Rather than creating a singular symbol, the designers collected a range of 150 interchangeable marks constructed with typefaces made by students, alumni, and faculty of the School of Art. In a visual representation of the breadth and pace of the School’s contributions to the development of graphic design specifically, and visual culture more broadly, these 150 marks race past one another, revealing a continuity of difference in an accelerated assembly of typographic inquiry. Intended to honor the diversity within gender among designers and artists, the mark includes a background color field which blends from pink to lavender to blue. The designers expect to add other ranges of hues and letterforms to the mark’s ongoing development, in a statement on the continued and ever-developing trajectory of design and art history. Said the designers: “Our intention is to create a visual statement of unending potential and accomplishment among past and future generations continually at work here at the Yale School of Art.”
The mark also serves as a springboard for a forthcoming publication of typeface specimens created by School of Art faculty and alumni. To be released in 2020, this book will illustrate the historical breadth of typographic design at the School of Art.
In addition to serving as an insignia of celebration, the 150th mark will also be used as the visual element anchoring a series of upcoming public talks and engagements planned for the Yale School of Art’s academic year. Visit art.yale.edu/150th for all announcements and information regarding upcoming anniversary programs.
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Diving Into the Wreck: Re-enacting Critical Practice—the course for all first-year MFA students from each area of graduate study and led by Dean and Professor Marta Kuzma—will include guest speakers Fred Moten, Peter Osborne, and Andrea Fraser, among others.
Sarah Oppenheimer’s all-school workshop The Sensitive Machine will be reprised this autumn after its first iteration in November 2018. The four-day interdisciplinary workshop was developed in collaboration with the Center for Engineering Innovation and Design (CEID) and explores the homology between human and mechanized gesture. Additionally, Senior Critic in Film, Video & Interdisciplinary A.L. Steiner will curate an exhibition of work by first-year MFA students in October.
In GRAPHIC DESIGN, Damon Rich will be giving the first Paul Rand lecture of the semester, and Karel Martens and Linda van Deursen will be conducting workshops with first- and second-year students. Sam de Groot will also give a lecture and conduct desk crits with students. The trio behind the Swedish design firm Bastion will be giving a subsequent Rand lecture, and Paul Elliman will be conducting a first-year workshop, working closely with students. Matthew Carter is returning as a Visiting Artist in Graphic Design and will be meeting with students throughout the academic year.
In PAINTING and PRINTMAKING, Meleko Mokgosi joins the faculty as Associate Professor, tenure track. This fall he’ll teach the course Narrative Figure for advanced undergraduate painting students. Molly Zuckerman-Hartung has been promoted to Senior Critic and will also be serving as the Undergraduate Liaison for the department. Abigail DeVille and Chitra Ganesh join as new core critics. New graduate courses include Robert Storr’s Truisms and Falsisms seminar, examining abiding categorical traps as well as models of dialectical thinking with relation to contemporary art practice. Sophy Naess’s Fabrics Lab is offered in a new dedicated space where dying processes, weave structures, and needlecraft can be investigated in theory and in praxis. Matt Keegan’s new bi-weekly course for second year painters, Minimizing the "i" in Thesis, will partner with Art History PhD candidate Michelle Donnelly who will work as a curatorial consultant on the 2020 Painting/Printmaking Thesis Exhibitions. Upcoming Visiting Artists include Rafa Esparza, Juliana Huxtable, Sheida Soleimani, Hannah Black, Nicole Eisenman, and Erin Christovale.
In PHOTOGRAPHY, Elle Pérez, Mark Steinmetz, and Sondra Perry will join the critic panel for the first rotation of crits, Justine Kurland, A.L. Steiner, and Arthur Ou will participate in the second rotation, and Teju Cole will attend Photography’s final reviews at the end of the semester. Senior Critic John Pilson has brought back the course Experimental Narratives, and faculty members Benjamin Donaldson and Lisa Kereszi have both been promoted as Senior Critics. Visiting Artists for the semester include Kristine Potter, Jenny Drumgoole, Susan Lipper, Zun Lee, Ari Marcopoulos, James Nachtwey, Sarah Anne Johnson, Sara VanDerBeek, Sharon Lockhart, Patty Chang, and Dru Donovan.
SCULPTURE will have a busy autumn with courses offered by faculty members Aki Sasamoto (Body, Space, and Time), Jenn Joy (Object Poetic(s)), Brent Howard (Materials and Facture), Melinda Ring (Actions), and Erica Wessmann (Intro. to Sculpture). Sandra Burns and Martin Kersels, who recently returned from sabbatical, will offer two sections of X-Crit—a weekly long format critique where "X" is an open variable.The department will offer studio visits from the above faculty and Visiting Critics include Rona Pondick, Juliana Cerqueira Leite, Huma Bhabha, Garnette Cadogan, Leigh Ledare, and Patrick Killoran.
UNDERGRADUATE Studies welcomes Corey McCorkle as a regular guest critic for the Senior Thesis Seminar. Performance artist Kembra Pfahler will visit the studios of undergraduate art majors and give a talk sponsored by both Undergraduate Studies and Sculpture. James Jack, interdisciplinary artist and educator from Yale-NUS College in Singapore, will visit with undergraduate students during the semester, and photographer Kathryn Harrison ('18) will give a talk on their work and conduct studio visits with art majors. Finally, A.L. Steiner will curate the Fall undergraduate exhibition in December.
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Upcoming Events: Autumn 2019
All events are free and open to the public.
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Cover for David Reinfurt's forthcoming book A *New* Program for Graphic Design (DAP, 2019).
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Thursday,
October 10
7pm
1156 Chapel Street, Graphic Design Atrium (Room 104)
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David Reinfurt: A *New* Program for Graphic Design
An independent graphic designer in New York City, David Reinfurt (MFA in Graphic Design, ‘99) introduced the study of graphic design at Princeton University in 2010. In late September, a book based on his teaching will be published by Inventory Press (Los Angeles) with D.A.P. (New York). A *New* Program for Graphic Design is a do-it-yourself textbook that synthesizes the pragmatic with the experimental and builds on mid- to late-20th-century pedagogical models to convey advanced principles of contemporary design. Rooted in three courses (Typography, Gestalt, and Interface) originally developed for liberal arts students, the book provides a broad introduction to graphic design and visual literacy for readers from any discipline.
As a co-founder of O-R-G inc., Dexter Sinister, and The Serving Library, Reinfurt has developed several models that have reimagined graphic design and publishing in the 21st century. He was 2016–2017 Mark Hampton Rome Prize fellow in Design at the American Academy in Rome and is the co-author of Muriel Cooper (MIT Press, 2017). Made possible in part through the generous Paul Rand Annual (’85 M.A.H.) Lectureship in Design Fund.
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Jessica Stockholder. In the Face of Drifting Eye, 2019. Installation view of Stuff Matters at the Centraal Museum in Utrecht, Netherlands, April 19 – September 1, 2019.
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Monday,
October 28
6pm
32 Edgewood Avenue (EIK)
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Jessica Stockholder in Conversation with Lynne Tillman and Marta Kuzma
Jessica Stockholder will be giving an artist talk entitled “Hinging: How to put it in the world.” Currently serving as the Distinguished Service Professor in the University of Chicago’s Department of Visual Arts, Stockholder will speak to the range of her work over time, addressing how she consistently works with material, color, and form to embody her interest in edge, boundary, autonomy, dependence, and coherence in the face of happenstance.
Her public lecture will be followed by a panel conversation with Stavros Niarchos Foundation Dean and Professor of Art Marta Kuzma and novelist, short story writer, and cultural critic Lynne Tillman. Hayden Visiting Artists are generously made possible by the Hayden Fund for Art and Ideas.
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Yale University Art Gallery. Photo: Christopher Gardner. Courtesy of Yale University.
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Thursday,
November 14
5:30pm
Yale University
Art Gallery
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Howardena Pindell, Wangechi Mutu, and Kevin Beasley in
"Looking Back at 50 Years of Change in the Visual Arts"
The School of Art is cosponsoring an exciting panel featuring three alumni—Howardena Pindell (‘67), Wangechi Mutu (‘00), and Kevin Beasley (‘12)—in conversation with the newly appointed Director of the Yale Center for British Art, Courtney J. Martin. The event marks the 50th anniversary of African American Studies at Yale and will reflect on changing perceptions of black visual arts since 1969 and share views on how to ensure an inclusive global art world for the future.
This program is cosponsored by the Department of African American Studies at Yale University, the Yale School of Art, and the Yale University Art Gallery.
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David Pease. Key Incident, 1994. Gouache on paper; 30 x 22.5 in. From the exhibition catalogue, David Pease: Notes from the Road (2016). Courtesy of the Henry Koerner Center for Emeritus Faculty, Yale University.
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Last year the School of Art community lost an esteemed member—distinguished artist, former Yale University professor, and Dean of the Yale School of Art from 1983 to 1996, David Pease. There has been no memorial planned at the wishes of his family, but an acknowledgment of his service to the School is vital.
David Pease was born in Bloomington, Indiana in the 1930s. He earned a BS and an MS in art from the University of Wisconsin-Madison in 1954 and 1955 respectively. Following his service in the U.S. Army from 1955-1957, Pease returned to the University of Wisconsin-Madison to earn his MFA in 1958. That same year he began teaching at Michigan State University before moving to Philadelphia to teach at Temple University’s Tyler School of Art in 1960. In 1977 he became dean of the school, and in 1983 moved to New Haven to teach and again serve as dean—this time at the Yale School of Art. Pease was dean of the school for thirteen years, and continued teaching there until 2000, when he retired as Street Professor Emeritus of Painting.
Dean Pease was responsible for hiring the first tenured woman professor in the School’s history, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville, and his commitment to fostering an environment of mutual respect and creative freedom there was unmatched. Now the School’s Director of Graduate Studies in Graphic Design, de Bretteville remembered him as “quietly generous,” sharing, “David's passing is a jolt bringing back many memories of his infinitely gracious and generous presence here, when I was first grappling with a still very pale male Yale…”
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David Pease. Lock Out, 1997. Pencil, ink, and gouache on paper, 14 x 11 in. From the exhibition catalogue, David Pease: Notes from the Road (2016). Courtesy of the Henry Koerner Center for Emeritus Faculty, Yale University.
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His half-century career of teaching and arts administration is only matched by an even more extensive, deeply personal studio practice, which resulted in a breadth of paintings collected by institutions such as the Whitney Museum of American Art and the Philadelphia Museum of Art. One of Pease’s former students, Jessica Helfand (MFA ‘89 in Graphic Design), described him as a “visual memorist,” whose work “pierce[es] the veil separating looking from reading.” Employing elements of chance in a formalization of memory, narrative, and place, his paintings allow an intimate view into his thinking and experiences, charting everything from the colors that comprised a vacation to the records of his favorite sports teams, to the array of stores populating the streets of his hometown.
“He was the first artist I ever met, and his was the first studio I ever set foot in,” said Helfand, who was also a family friend of the artist and studied closely under him at the Yale School of Art. “In the thirty years since I graduated, David has been, without question, my greatest mentor, particularly with regard to my studio practice. He literally taught me how to think like an artist—not just act like one.”
The organizational rigor that was characteristic to his approach in arts administration greatly influenced his own artistic practice: “The more that I spent time as an administrator, not in my studio, I began to realize that the calendars were in some way, my form of drawing.” An interplay of diaries, charts, and calendars, his work engages the materiality of paint through a self-prescribed visual lexicon—memories coded on canvas and left for viewers to decipher. There is meaning in everything: the darkness of the shadows corresponds to the temperature of the days, the colors chosen match those found in restaurants patronized and landscapes witnessed. “Nobody is going to know that,” he said, “but it gives me reasons to make decisions...decisions based on external information which I take a kind of responsibility for.”
Shortly after retiring as Dean of the Yale School of Art in 1996, Pease spoke at Ball State University in his home state of Indiana as part of the school’s Provost's Lecture Series. A talk on process, he shared the methodology behind his carefully systematized paintings and offered sage advice to the next generation of artists: “The function of the overwhelming majority of the work any artist produces is two-fold: To keep you in the game and to teach you how to make and ultimately how to recognize that small fraction of the work which is able to transcend its making.”
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Elizabeth Tubergen. Double Grave, 2018-19. Wood, hardware, outdoor vinyl fabric, outdoor foam; 12 x 12 x 24 feet. Currently on view at DeCordova Sculpture Park and Museum, Lincoln, MA.
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Elizabeth Tubergen awarded Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation’s German Chancellor’s Fellowship
Elizabeth Tubergen, lecturer in Sculpture, has been awarded the German Chancellor’s Fellowship through the Alexander Von Humboldt Foundation in Berlin, Germany. She has just begun a year in residence at international cultural center, Kunstlerhaus Bethanien, where her studies and research will center around the embodiment and representation of collective memory in Berlin and the artist-artwork-audience relationship as an active, ongoing site of meaning-making. Investigating the way that monuments and memorials hold an active relationship to the collective subconscious, Elizabeth will focus specifically on Berlin Wall and the monuments in Treptower Park, researching at the Schwules Museum Archive and Bauhaus Archive in preparation for a forthcoming solo exhibition at Kunstlerhaus Bethanien in 2020.
The Alexander von Humboldt Foundation’s German Chancellor Fellowship Programme is an international leadership development initiative for university graduates from Brazil, China, India, Russia, and the United States. Fellows spend a year in Germany net working with other prospective leaders from abroad to explore new solutions to contemporary global issues. During their stay in Germany, the German Chancellor Fellows pursue research-based, socially significant self-developed projects that have a long-term, publicly-visible impact. Elizabeth’s project will seek to answer questions like “What parts of history are remembered, marked, and preserved?” and “How do Germany’s unique preservation strategies and representations of memory shape the physical, socio-political, and psychological landscape in Berlin?”
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Technicians install Meleko Mokgosi's large-scale commission at the University of Michigan Museum of Art, Ann Arbor, MI. Courtesy of UMMA.
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Meleko Mokgosi Opens Solo Exhibition at the University of Michigan Museum of Art
Associate Professor in Painting/Printmaking Meleko Mokgosi has just opened a solo exhibition at the University of Michigan Museum of Art entitled Pan-African Pulp. Exploring the history of Pan-Africanism—the global movement to unite ethnic groups of sub-Saharan African descent—the show connects directly and indelibly to the nearby city of Detroit and its own history of activism and Pan-African movements.
“I feel incredibly honored to be invited by Tina Olsen and UMMA to participate in the new biennial commission program at the museum,” said the artist. “By focusing on Pan-Africanism, the installation hopes to find meaningful ways of reconceptualizing the importance of a movement that sought to build alliances towards Black consciousness, and foregrounding the rights and aspirations of Africans to self-determination, and self-governance. There is no doubt about the injustices, inhumanity, exploitation, violence, and racism caused by and associated with the Euro-American slave trade, European imperialism in Africa, and institutionalized racism in the Americas; the effects of these are ongoing and reflected not only in cultural and geopolitical contexts but also in the very reproduction and circulation of capital. It is therefore imperative to find ways of building solidarity across as many areas as possible.”
Mokgosi’s installation in UMMA’s Vertical Gallery inaugurates a new biennial commission program, and the space features large-scale panels inspired by African photo novels of the 1960s and ’70s, stories from Setswana literature, and posters from Pan-African movements from Detroit and around the world. Pan-African Pulp opened on August 26 and will be open through Fall 2021 at UMMA in Ann Arbor, Michigan.
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Anoka Faruqee & David Driscoll. 2019P-24 (Circle), 2019. Acrylic on linen on panel; 33 3/4 x 33 3/4 in. Courtesy of the artists and Koenig & Clinton, Brooklyn, NY. Photo: Kanthy Peng, New Haven, CT.
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Anoka Faruqee Opens Exhibition at Koenig & Clinton
Anoka Faruqee, Director of Graduate Studies in Painting/Printmaking, is opening an exhibition of new work with collaborator David Driscoll at Koenig & Clinton in New York City. Faruqee and Driscoll recently held a solo exhibition at The Suburban in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and are currently participating in the DeCordova Sculpture Park Biennial 2019 in Lincoln, Massachusetts. Entitled Relative Brightness, this will be their first solo exhibition as a duo with the gallery. Faruqee and Driscoll first began collaborating in 2012, and this new exhibition features work that builds upon past explorations in their series of Circle paintings, to investigate the ungraspable notion of twilight.
The title of the exhibition—Relative Brightness—comes from the idea that the perceived lightness or darkness of colors and objects is completely determined by context, including surrounding colors and lighting conditions. Taking up this perceptual relativity of color and value as their subject matter, Faruqee & Driscoll's paintings reconstruct the fleeting and intangible effects of light passing through atmosphere. Anoka Faruqee & David Driscoll: Relative Brightness opened at Koenig & Clinton in Brooklyn on September 6 and continues through October 19, 2019.
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Taryn Wolf Promoted to Assistant Dean of Academic Affairs
The School of Art is pleased to announce that Taryn Wolf has been promoted to Assistant Dean for Academic Affairs. Taryn came to Yale in the role of Director of Academic Administration in February of 2018, bringing with her many years of experience working in the administrations of arts institutions across the US. “Taryn’s contributions to the School since joining us nearly two years ago are innumerable, and fundamental to our operations as a graduate institution,” shared Dean Marta Kuzma. “Her steadfast dedication to the students is exemplified in each of her decisions, big and small, and her transition to the role of Assistant Dean demonstrates the integral position she plays in ensuring the academic success of our students.”
Most recently, Taryn was the Senior Director of Recruitment and Outreach at The New School in NYC, where she provided strategic enrollment planning and leadership for all six of The New School’s undergraduate and graduate colleges. Previously, Taryn has held several positions in the admissions offices at MICA (where she also earned her B.F.A. in 1999), CalArts, and the School of Visual Arts where she began as an admission counselor in 2000. In the role of Assistant Dean, Taryn will continue to provide strategic leadership and process improvement for the office of Academic Administration, working with the Directors of the School’s graduate and undergraduate program areas, and the Director of Finance and Administration in order to coordinate the administrative activities relating to the academic policies, procedures, and programs of the School of Art. She will also continue serving in her role as Dean's Designee.
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Alumni!
Let's be in touch.
Send updates and news, and say hello:
SchoolofArtAlumni@yale.edu
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