As we embark on a new academic year at the School of Art + Art History + Design, I want to set the stage by outlining just who we are and where we are from. Entering my second year as director, I have been constantly impressed and inspired by the scale and scope of the school. It is an exhilarating, affirming, and at times overwhelming educational environment for our students, staff, and faculty. With some 40 full-time faculty, 25 staff, 500 undergraduate majors, and 52 graduate students, we are one of the largest units in the College of Arts & Sciences. We will teach 6000 students this year in three distinct locations: the Art Building, Ceramics and Metal Arts, and Sand Point. We maintain six exhibition venues within these three buildings that will host over fifty exhibitions this year. We have a truly international presence with students and faculty from Hungary, Canada, South Korea, Serbia, Mexico, Vietnam, Argentina, the Philippines, England, China, France, India, Ireland, the Netherlands, Japan, Germany, Taiwan, Italy, Indonesia, and Barbados. We are proud to be a part of the University of Washington, the most innovative public university in the world according to a new ranking by Reuters and only surpassed by Stanford, MIT, and Harvard.
We are very excited to begin the year with the arrival of six new faculty—Jason O. Germany, Justin Hamacher, Aaron Flint Jamison, Adair Rounthwaite, Brandon Siscoe, and Michael Swaine—the largest influx of faculty in several decades. At our Grad Welcome BBQ, we introduced 22 new graduate students pursuing MA, MDes, MFA, and PhD degrees. With the extraordinary support of the college and numerous donors and endowments, it is the first time in school history that we have been able to provide competitive recruitment scholarships to all of our incoming graduate students. We are hopeful that we can maintain this level of support so that we can continue to attract the most promising graduate students who in turn help set the tone for our entire student body. You can aid in this effort by donating to the graduate student priority fund for all our programs.
We welcome back students from study abroad programs in the Netherlands, Italy, and England as well as a few who participated in international internships in Indonesia and Italy. Abundant faculty research and teaching opportunities have been supported by the Wyckoff Milliman Fund for Faculty Excellence, the Royalty Research Fund, The New Foundation Seattle, Boeing, Group Health, the American Council of Learned Societies, and the Harvard University Center for Italian Renaissance Studies. Make sure to visit our website or link to one of our social media portals in the sidebar of this newsletter to keep abreast of the publications, exhibitions, product launches, presentations, awards, and recognitions that highlight these efforts.
The Jacob Lawrence Gallery is continuing to reinvent itself as a vital nexus for not only student and faculty exhibitions, but also for exhibitions and related programming that introduce individual creators and works of art and design, which enhance and broaden our educational mission. As the school’s most public portal to the broader university community and beyond, the gallery has launched a brand new website and published the inaugural edition of the Jake Journal.
You may have noticed the new school logo at the top of this newsletter. Designed by Professor Kristine Matthews and her associates at Studio Matthews, it is the introduction to a new identity concept that will be rolled out in the coming weeks, followed by a new website design in 2016. After the Board of Regents’ approval of our name change to the School of Art + Art History + Design, we want to highlight the three divisions of the school and emphasize how the “+” symbolizes the potential for collaboration and creativity within the school.
Looking forward, the autumn promises to be filled with lectures (Alexander Nagle, Ayumi Horie, and Leo Mazow), exhibitions (Contentious Products, Shedding and Shredding, Toward a Democracy of Making), faculty searches (Art History, Industrial Design, Interaction Design), and, most importantly, the day to day inspiration that manifests in our studios and classrooms between our students and their teachers. Check our calendar to see all upcoming events. In addition, we will be publishing this newsletter on a monthly basis during the academic year to keep you up-to-date with the School of Art + Art History + Design.
Jamie Walker
Director, School of Art + Art History + Design
Professor, 3D4M: ceramics + glass + sculpture
Wyckoff Milliman Endowed Chair in Art