On the first day of April, as I was enjoying that glorious rite of spring quarter — walking through The Quad in awe of the cherry blossoms and the vast crowds of fellow admirers — I overheard two couples exclaim: “Can you imagine getting to be a student here?!” We are indeed fortunate to pursue our educational goals and passions in such a remarkable landscape, even if it is a bit of a bucolic distraction at times. As always during this last quarter of the academic year, there is a generous calendar of lectures, exhibitions, and good news to share about the School of Art + Art History + Design community — read on!
A proposal put forth by a group of Interaction Design students — Sarah Stickler, Claire Kantner, Sara Tieu, Ian Yu, and Cecilia Zhao — was one of five projects selected to be featured in The Road Ahead: Reimagining Mobility exhibition sponsored by Cooper Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum. In late February, the students travelled to New York to participate in the adjoining symposium and present their ideas to a panel of experts.
During spring break, Assistant Professor Whitney Lynn (Interdisciplinary Visual Arts) journeyed with Division of Art graduate students on a field trip to San Francisco where they exhibited work with their peers at the San Francisco Art Institute. The annual grad trip is a highly anticipated event with previous destinations to Vancouver, Portland, New York City, and Marfa, Texas; these trips provide an exposure to a wide and inspirational variety of art and artists not always available here in Seattle.
Congratulations to three of our assistant professors, Kathryn Bunn-Marcuse (Division of Art History, NW Native American Art), Aaron Flint Jamison (Division of Art, Photo/Media), and Michael Swaine (Division of Art, 3D4M) for receiving grants from the UW Royalty Research Fund to help focus on their ongoing research. Bunn-Marcuse was also selected to participate in the Simpson Center Digital Humanities Summer Fellowship. Swaine recently celebrated the publication of For Want of a Nail, an endeavor generated as a member of Futurefarmers and with his collaborator Amy Franceschini.
One of the major endeavors supported by the School Advisory Board is to host the Anne Focke Arts Leadership Award, a biennial event that celebrates an individual who has made essential contributions as a leader in the arts. Design alum Steve Kaneko was announced as this year’s recipient at a gathering at Teague in February. An award ceremony and dinner will be held on campus at the UW Club on April 13.
The annual Kollar American Art Lecture will be held at the Henry Art Gallery Auditorium on April 18, with guest speaker Elizabeth West Hutchinson offering her interpretation of a series of fascinating photographs that Eadweard Muybridge produced while accompanying a military inspection of Southeast Alaska in 1868.
Thanks to Senior Lecturer Timea Tihanyi (Division of Art, Interdisciplinary Visual Arts) and Assistant Professor Adair Rounthwaite (Division of Art History, Contemporary Art) for their efforts in bringing the acclaimed artist Theaster Gates to the UW as the Mary Ann and John D. Mangels Distinguished Lecturer. The tickets for Gates’ talk in May quickly sold out, but our students will also get a chance to interact with him during his visit.
The Jacob Lawrence Gallery has been attracting significant attention recently, with a spate of articles and reviews related to the 25th-anniversary of the Gallery. A new campaign is under way to increase the Gallery endowment in order to maintain the quality of exhibitions and related programming that has been achieved during the past several years. This spring the Gallery will feature six capstone exhibitions highlighting the work of our undergraduates in Art and Design.
Along with the aforementioned shows, there will be numerous other exhibition opportunities for our graduating students in other galleries located in the Art Building, Ceramic and Metal Arts Building, and our Sand Point facility, culminating in the MFA + MDes Thesis Exhibition hosted by the Henry Art Gallery, which runs from May 25 through June 23.
As always, sincere thanks for your interest in who we are and what we do.
Happy Spring!
Jamie Walker
- Director, School of Art + Art History + Design
- Professor, 3D4M: ceramics + glass + sculpture
- Wyckoff Milliman Endowed Chair in Art