Spring 2022 curricular happenings & highlights
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Spring 2022 welcome back graphic by Kayla Hawkins, Graphic Design MFA ‘24.
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Courses are starting up again this week — and while the first two weeks of class are virtual in keeping with the University’s COVID guidelines, the Spring 2022 semester holds tremendous potential with MFA thesis exhibitions already underway.
Perhaps the most significant news item comes from the School of Art’s Undergraduate Studies department. On January 12, Senior Critic and Director of Undergraduate Studies Lisa Kereszi announced that students taking undergraduate-level art courses will no longer be required to pay course fees, and art majors in Yale College will no longer be required to pay facility fees, beginning now with the Spring 2022 semester.
Additionally in Undergraduate Studies, full-time faculty member in Sculpture, Desmond Lewis is teaching a new class entitled “Hidden Truth” — a philosophy course rooted in metal-casting. Dannielle Bowman (MFA ‘18), in addition to joining the Photography faculty this semester, is teaching the undergraduate course, “Picturing Us: Representation in Digital Photography,” an investigation of the politics of visibility and intersectionality. More MFA alums joining the faculty include Carly Sheehan (MFA '20) and Ernest Bryant (MFA '18) who are each teaching a session of "Basic Drawing" this spring. Yale College alum Ilana Harris-Babou (BA ’13) also joins the faculty this semester to teach the “Junior Seminar” for undergraduate art majors, in which ongoing visual projects are addressed in relation to historical and contemporary issues.
In the School of Art’s four areas of graduate study, the Graphic Design department has an especially busy semester planned. As the search for a director of the department continues (see below!), new courses and lectures are happening under the direction of newly appointed Co-Directors of Graduate Studies, Julian Bittiner and Susan Sellers. Julian is teaching the new class, “Interdisciplinary Typography Workshop,” which targets students from the Schools of Art and Architecture. ELLA, a woman and minority-owned Los Angeles design studio, will be kicking off the Paul Rand Lecture Series with a talk on February 2, to be followed by Dena Yago, Angie Keefer, Silvio Lorusso, and Jack Self speaking later in the semester.
The department also welcomes back Senior Critics Linda van Deursen, Paul Elliman, and Irma Boom for their annual series of workshops. And in Senior Critic Michael Rock's new seminar on design strategy, students work together on a real-world project, collaborating with design strategists from the studio 2x4 and Sculpture alum Tavares Strachan (MFA '06) to shape the initial expression of the Oku Promise, an open grant/scholarship program for Bahamian high-school students founded by the artist.
In Painting/Printmaking, Rachelle Dang continues her new appointment as a full-time faculty member, joining with Associate Curator at High Line Art, Melanie Kress, to advise the thesis exhibitions staged by the graduating 2022 cohort. In a new cross-listed course offered by the department to students in both American and African American studies at Yale, Co-Director of the department Meleko Mokgosi joins with Tav Nyong'o to teach “Performative Painting and Painterly Performance,” which looks for traces of the brush, touch, and flesh within the vexed histories of blackness and abstraction, thinking through and beyond the black figure in Western painting. Visiting Artists slated for the Spring 2022 semester in Painting/Printmaking include Jennifer Packer, Peter Halley, Sam Vernon, and Erin Christovale among others.
Director of Graduate Studies in Photography, Gregory Crewdson, returns from sabbatical to lead the department through the upcoming lectures and thesis exhibition. Elle Pérez, Collier Schorr, Dannielle Bowman, Sara Cwynar, Genevieve Gaignard, and Michelle Kuo are all joining the Spring 2022 critique panels this semester, and scheduled Visiting Artists in Photography include Zak Arctander, Malcolm Peacock, Alissa Bennett, and Nina Katchadourian among many others. Also in Photography, Genevieve Gaignard (MFA '14) and Tommy Kha (MFA '13) are co-teaching the new course, "Room Full of Mirrors: Identity, Representation and The Self Portrait," in which students explore the complexities of one’s own image in front of and behind the camera.
In Sculpture, Aki Sasamoto returns from sabbatical to serve as the Acting Director during Martin Kersel’s planned sabbatical. She’ll be teaching a seminar simply titled “Doing,” in which movement and objects are related with the artists’ practice through movement exercises, workshops, field trips, and guest talks. Program alum Joseph Buckley (MFA ‘15) returns to teach “GOBLINIZATION: ‘a horizon of vomit & blood,’” a new course about getting lost in the source, about going too far; about overexposure and overexertion, trudging through the abhorrent, the bizarre, and the weird to hypothesize new modalities of emancipation and hope. Elizabeth Tubergen is also teaching "Publics," addressing the spaces where things meet, which may scale up students' work. Sculpture’s Visiting Artists include Agnieszka Kurant, Michael Rakowitz, and Lan Tuazon among others.
In All-School endeavors, a number of workshops for students and faculty are slated for the coming months, including a Financial Literacy Workshop with Amy Smith; a Workshop on Trauma-Informed Classrooms and Critiques with a session for students followed by a session for faculty and staff; as well as a Zoom Laughter Work~Playshop with artist and musician Laraaji, organized by Graphic Design student M.C. Madrigal.
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Seeking director / tenure-track faculty member in Graphic Design
Review of applications is beginning this month — share or apply!
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Photo: Lisa Kereszi, Senior Critic in Photography and Director of Undergraduate Studies in Art
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After leading graphic design at Yale for more than 30 years, Sheila Levrant de Bretteville has stepped down as the Director of Graduate Studies — a post she has held since 1990 when she was appointed the first tenured woman professor at the School, leading our renowned design program through decades of innovation and growth with her strong focus on student-centered pedagogy. While Sheila will continue her dedicated work teaching and mentoring students at the School of Art, a search for the next director has begun.
The Yale School of Art invites applications worldwide for a tenured or tenure-track faculty appointment in the area of Graphic Design to begin July 1, 2022. The selected candidate will also assume the Directorship of the program for a designated period of time.
We seek a designer with a practice distinguished by formal and critical inquiry, who is technologically forward-thinking, has the ability to foster exchange across disciplines, and a broad knowledge of graphic design’s multivalent histories. The successful candidate should have strategic leadership skills, a collaborative approach to management, and a desire to innovate the Graphic Design area of study within the School of Art and wider university. A record of expanding and diversifying access to educational opportunities for historically underrepresented and marginalized communities is central to this goal and a crucial criteria for consideration.
Learn more here, and apply directly at this link >
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Celebrating the success of School of Art alums at Miami art fairs
Dean Pinder visits Miami and hosts a brunch to connect artists after Yale
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Dean Pinder with Farah Al Qasimi's work in Helena Anrather’s booth at Art Basel Miami.
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In December, Stavros Niarchos Foundation Dean Kymberly Pinder left the chilly terrain of New Haven to visit Miami, where she spent time getting to know the work of Yale School of Art alums participating in the annual art fairs in Miami. Work by alumni was abundant throughout the city at Art Basel Miami, Untitled, NADA, the Perez Art Museum Miami, local galleries, and other locations.
With the assistance of Jill Westgard, the school’s Director for Development and Alumni Relations, Dean Pinder hosted an intimate community brunch for alums, attended by artists from the 1999 through 2019 MFA cohorts, representing all four areas of graduate study at the school.
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Dean Pinder with Farah Al Qasimi (MFA ‘17) at the Yale School of Art brunch in Miami.
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Among these alums was Farah Al Qasimi (MFA ‘17), whose solo booth with New York gallery Helena Anrather, was a particular favorite of local attendees. Through Art Basel in Miami Beach (ABMB)’s Legacy Purchase Program, Miami Beach residents voted to select two photographs and a wallpaper by Al Qasimi for acquisition by the City of Miami Beach. Her subversively scenic wallpaper simultaneously contrasts and complements the artist’s striking photographs—all emerging from Al Qasimi’s recent series investigating possibilities of paradise. Al Qasimi’s works are now installed inside the Miami Beach Convention Center, as the most recent addition to the city’s Art in Public Places program.
Another significant public acquisition of SoA alum work came through Danielle De Jesus’s (MFA ‘21) participation in the New Art Dealers Alliance (NADA) fair, for which curator Ebony L. Haynes (also an SoA visiting faculty member) chose eight solo presentations by emerging galleries for NADA’s Curated Spotlight. Exhibiting with the inclusive New York-based gallery focused on artists from Latin America and the diaspora, Calderón, De Jesus’s 2021 painting Two Men and Their Blue Gate was selected by the Pérez Art Museum for acquisition to their public collection. Rich in color and deceptively complex in composition, the acrylic-on-vinyl-table-cloth work features two men with bicycles gazing forward, framed behind and within the titular blue gate.
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Dean Pinder with Danielle De Jesus’s work in Calderón’s booth, NADA.
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The Yale School of Art extends its most sincere congratulations to Farah, Danielle, and all of the artists showing at the fairs, galleries, and museums in Miami last month.
This Miami excursion was just the first of many trips by Dean Pinder in support of graduate alums, as she works to cultivate a sense of community amongst artists in the years and decades after their time in New Haven and at Yale.
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Staff updates: New addition in the Dean's Office
Join us in welcoming Angela Chen as the new Project Specialist
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Dean Kymberly Pinder of the Yale School of Art is pleased to announce the appointment of Angela Chen (MFA '20) as Project Specialist. Chen has extensive experience working in administration and education. Prior to her appointment, she spent six years as the assistant director of a private tutoring center and two years managing the studio of Teju Cole.
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A graduate of the School's MFA program in Photography, she is excited to return to the School in this new capacity. Working closely with Dean Pinder and other School leadership, Chen will manage programs and initiatives that build bridges between the School, the University, and the greater New Haven community.
Photo: Tavish Timothy.
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School of Art alums are invited to submit events and exhibitions to be added to the new School of Art in the World calendar, as well as publications and initiatives to be archived on the wiki.
Members of the public are invited to subscribe to the School of Art in the World calendar, and visit the full wiki archive.
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Thank you for dedication to and interest in the Yale School of Art. We welcome your support of the school and students, and we are grateful to the many alum and friends who generously donate. Give here >
We appreciate your support!
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