Healing & new beginnings
A message from Dean Kymberly Pinder
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Photo by Eve Caughey. Drawing by Jami Porter Lara.
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Despite all the issues of disruption, loss and isolation through global health and economic crises, social justice reckonings and more, this academic year begins with a great sense of optimism and possibility. Returning to Yale as the new dean of the School of Art, I am inspired by the School’s legacy, which leads not with a singular voice or style but through a rich array of diverse approaches and practices.
Our students, faculty and staff have persevered through such a year of many changes, losses and awakenings. I especially want to thank the dedicated staff and faculty who have supported our students, and each other, this past year and a half. Their creativity and perseverance to ‘make things work’ to serve our educational mission must be commended.
As I join the incredible community at the School with much hope and a lot of energy, I want to focus on listening, healing and reconnection. As a seasoned administrator, art historian and the first person of color to lead this 150-year old institution, I look forward to offering insight from my expertise, knowledge, and personal experience to prepare critically-minded artists to impact their communities and excel professionally.
I also look forward to ensuring the School meets the needs of our students as they forge ahead in their artistic endeavors. But I cannot do this alone. Our immediate and extended communities — at the School of Art, Yale, in New Haven and beyond — must work together to pursue the myriad possibilities as we look towards the next 150 years of this amazing institution and its graduates’ future potential.
My immediate goals as dean are to focus on reconnecting and healing in this "new together." Listening is a gift and I hope to create as many opportunities as possible to hear from all who consider themselves part of the community of the Yale School of Art. The fall semester is underway, as work in the studio remains primary to the experience of our students. The faculty and visiting artists have begun returning to in-person critiques and studio visits, restoring the vitality within our community and providing greater support for our students as we all continue to navigate the ‘new normal.’
Objects and their making unlock and shape dialogues in some of the most transformative ways for both makers and viewers. It is an honor to return to Yale to help nurture its rich culture of rigorous inquiry and creativity, as we work collectively to extend the boundaries of arts practice and education.
I look forward to getting to know you and all that you cherish about and wish for our School.
Kymberly Pinder
Stavros Niarchos Foundation Dean
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Professor, former dean Rob Storr retires
and granted Professor Emeritus status by the Yale Corporation
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Robert Storr with a student. Photo by Michael Marsland.
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Over the summer, on June 30, Robert Storr—artist, critic, curator, professor, and dean of the School of Art from 2006 to 2016—officially retired from Yale and was granted emeritus status by the Yale Corporation. During Professor Storr’s years of contributions to the School of Art and to the greater university, he maintained a vigorous academic and artistic career, continuously creating new work and publishing acclaimed texts while serving as a mentor to hundreds of students during his fifteen years at Yale.
As noted by a Yale News feature on the occasion of his retirement, Storr “advocated new modes of thinking and teaching about art,” recruiting talented artists of color to serve as critics and overseeing the appointments of the first women to lead the Painting/Printmaking department: Rochelle Feinstein and Anoka Faruqee, respectively. Storr told Yale News, “The discourse is wide open at all times and in all directions, which is something teachers, scholars, and artists should never forget.”
We hope you all will join us in congratulating Professor Storr, and in thanking him for his dedicated work at the Yale School of Art.
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Fall 2021 curricular happenings & highlights
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Fall 2021 welcome back graphic by Hannah Tjaden, Graphic Design MFA '22.
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With new student orientations and introductory presentations by first-year MFAs already behind us, the Fall 2021 semester is off to an exciting start:
2021 Presidential Fellow Sondra Perry begins her engagement with the School teaching Porous Bodies, an all-school group critique and studio course for students incorporating sculpture, video, sound, and installation into complex relational works of art. We’re also pleased to welcome Sarah Oppenheimer and Jace Clayton as the faculty members leading the mandatory first-year MFA course, Diving into the Wreck: Rethinking Critical Practice.
In Sculpture, essayist Garnette Cadogan returns for a second semester to teach BLACKNESS, an exploration, through conversations with sculpture, performance, painting, photography, film, and literature, of blackness in its rich varieties — as material, as mood, as color, as absence of light, and as the presence of racial identity. Artist Em Rooney and curator Eunice Belidor are also scheduled as upcoming Visiting Artists in Sculpture this fall.
Painting/Printmaking will welcome Edra Soto, Mary Reid Kelley '09 and Patrick Kelley, and Erin Christovale as Visiting Artists in the coming months. A guest in the all-department Convocation this semester is Gregg Bordowitz, who will join for a discussion of his text Volition. Professor Anoka Faruqee will be leading the department as its sole Director of Graduate Studies while fellow Director and Associate Professor, Meleko Mokgosi, is on sabbatical.
In Graphic Design, two innovative workshops are being offered this semester: Metadata as Poetry taught by Laurel Schwulst in September, to be followed by the research-based Decentralized, Disenchanted taught by Geoff Han '06 in October. Additionally, artist and art director Hassan Rahim is slated to give a talk and meet with students Graphic Design.
In Photography, artist Terttu Uibopuu '11 joins with New Yorker staff writer Vinson Cunningham to teach Parallel Practices, and new to the department’s roster of rotating critics are Guggenheim curator Ashley James, art historian and curator Drew Sawyer, and curator and writer Xin Wang. Upcoming Visiting Artists in Photography—each independently organized by the MFA students themselves—include Kendall Bessent, Judith Black, Daniel Ramos, Whitney Hubbs, Cole Don Kelley, Thilde Jensen, John Edmonds '16, and Martin Kollar. Senior Critic John Pilson is the Acting Director of Graduate Studies in Photography during the Fall 2021 semester while Professor Gregory Crewdson is on sabbatical.
In Undergraduate Studies at the School of Art this semester, graphic designer Jesse Marsolais joins the faculty to teach Art of the Printed Word. Nathan Carter '99, another new faculty member, is teaching Interdisciplinary Exploration For Making Fictional Worlds, Flying Machines and Shaking Things Up — an exciting new course for first-year Yale College undergraduates in which students engage in a range of interdisciplinary activities to consider how seemingly unrelated materials and content can activate creative thinking and generative activity.
The students in Ben Hagari’s course Principles of Animation have already toured Yale’s Film Study Center, the optical devices collections at the Peabody Museum, as well as the movable books at Beinecke Library and more, with future trips planned for sites across the university. Pamela Hovland’s Graphic Design Methodologies course has welcomed designer and collector Thomas Strong '67 as well as musician, host and creator of the award-winning podcast and Netflix series Song Exploder, Hrishikesh Hirway, as guests. Additional guests in Undergraduate Studies for the fall semester include Antoine Catala, Kati Gegenheimer '13, Mark Thomas Gibson '13, and Sam Messer '82, who will join the School of Art as guest critics advising senior art majors on their thesis projects.
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From left to right: Oscar Rene Cornejo, Susan Kigamwa, Janna King.
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In addition to our new dean, this fall will also be the first semester for Oscar Rene Cornejo, artist and 2011 MFA alum, who joins the Painting/Printmaking department as Lecturer and Graduate Department Coordinator. In the Development Office, we’re excited to welcome Susan Kigamwa as the School’s Assistant Director of Development and Alumni Relations, alongside Janna King as the new Program Coordinator.
We’re also saddened to say goodbye to longtime faculty member in Painting/Printmaking, Molly Zuckerman-Hartung, who has decided to leave full-time teaching to fully focus on making art. In addition to shaping our graduate community, her impact on the undergraduate level was deeply felt. It’s with immense thanks that we celebrate Molly’s contributions and wish her well in her next art-filled chapter.
Another departing faculty member is the dedicated artist and art historian Jonathan Weinberg, who recently retired as Critic in Undergraduate Studies after first joining the faculty more than a decade ago, in 2009. Recently, Jonathan worked as Editor on the acclaimed exhibition catalog Art After Stonewall: 1969-1989, which won the 2020 Award for Excellence from the Association of Art Museum Curators.
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Class Action Collective remembers Edvin Yegir, Graphic Design MFA ‘95
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Edvin Yegir, MFA GD 1995, beloved friend and colleague, passionate designer and educator, died on August 11, 2021 in a motorcycle accident. He was 58 years old.
Edvin’s graphic design practice was marked by an intense engagement with typographic form and its expressive qualities. His studio, Typotopia, based in Cambridge MA, was devoted to strategic and formally innovative communication design for commercial and cultural clients. He was a member of Class Action Collective, a group founded at Yale School of Art, that employs design to address social change.
Edvin was a professor at the University of Connecticut, where he co-directed the undergraduate graphic design program and served as director of the Design Center Studio. Mark Zurolo, MFA GD 2001, taught with Edvin at UConn for 20 years: "I’ve never met a designer more thoughtfully and philosophically engaged or more adored by his students. The concept of our program without him is unimaginable."
Edvin will be remembered by classmates, colleagues and students for his kind, passionate, loyal, and generous nature; his great love of books; his belief in challenging dominant power structures; his fantastic hair and little round glasses; and his infectious laugh.
—Class Action Collective
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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 being part of our community. During these uncertain times, we've created support funds to help address the School's most pressing needs.
We appreciate your support!
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