Maryland Institute College of Art will hold its 177th commencement ceremony on Monday, May 12 at 2 p.m. In honor of Dr. Richard Kalter's 25 years of service to the MICA community as philosopher-in-residence, Kalter will be the speaker at commencement and receive the College's Medal of Honor. The ceremony takes place in the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall at 1212 Cathedral Street.
Dr. Richard Kalter has been philosopher-in-residence at MICA for the past 25 years. In this role, he has provided informal individual and group discussions with students at the College, including a regular series of Sunday evening conversations at his home. He has also organized and presented seminars on humanistic issues as they relate to artists and participated in critiques for MICA's studio classes. He is a graduate of Union Theological Seminary in New York City, Yale Divinity School, and Harvard University. Kalter taught at Yale for 13 years before coming to MICA to be philosopher-in-residence. A poet and ordained Episcopal priest, Dr. Richard Kalter regularly collaborates with artists, for example, providing texts for paintings by Barry Nemett, chair of MICA's Department of Painting.
Four individuals who have made outstanding contributions to the arts will receive honorary degrees from the College. Beatrice Levi and Deborah Willis will receive Doctor of Humane Letters degrees. A Doctor of Fine Arts degree will be awarded to John Maeda. The 2003 Alumni Award will be presented to David Jacobs. MICA President Fred Lazarus commented, "We are grateful for this year's honorary award recipients. Each one has made a substantial gift to the arts through their work, volunteerism, and overall enthusiasm. They are role models to the MICA community and, especially, to the class of 2003. "
Beatrice Levi was born in Baltimore in 1919. A graduate of Western High School and Goucher College, Levi was the founding member of the Art Seminar Group. Beginning in 1950 and still active in the Baltimore region, this group of women was influential in bringing the arts to Baltimore. The group started by taking trips to New York City to see plays and musicals. Then, after speaking with The Baltimore Sun's columnist Kenneth Sawyer, the women began to visit museums and galleries to view contemporary art. Levi is one of 30 women to be included in the Jewish Women's Archives, an exhibition to take place at the Jewish Museum of Maryland in 2004.
Curator of exhibitions at Washington, D.C.'s Smithsonian Institution's Center for African-American History and Culture, Deborah Willis is both an art photographer and a historian of African-American photography. She has lectured extensively about African-American photographers and has had her work exhibited throughout the United States including the Center for Creative Photography in Tucson, Arizona; Atlanta Arts Festival in Atlanta, Georgia; and the International Center for Photography in New York City. She was awarded a MacArthur Fellowship in 1999, the Pratt Institute's Alumni Achievement Award in Education, and has also received the International Center for Photography and Infinity Award for writing on photography. Willis is currently working on a book exploring the photographic images of the African-American female body.
An innovative and influential graphic design artist in both print and digital media, John Maeda graduated from Massachusetts Institute of Technology and returned there in 1996 to join the faculty of the MIT Media Laboratory. He is the author of two books about digital design, Design by Numbers and MAEDA@MEDIA. He has received many awards including Mainichi Design Prize (Japan), National Design Award (United States), DaimlerChrysler Design Award, Design Management Institute Muriel Cooper Award. Maeda was named to Esquire Magazine's "21 Most Important People of the 21st Century." His work was exhibited at NTT InterCommunication Center in Nishi-Shinjuku, Tokyo in 2001 and the Cristinerose Gallery in New York in 2003. Upcoming exhibitions include the London Institute of Contemporary Art and the Fondation Cartier in France in 2005.
David Jacobs is a 1961 graduate of MICA's painting department. He worked as an arts writer and television producer, and created two of the longest-running dramas in television history Dallas and Knots Landing. A trustee of Maryland Institute College of Art, Jacobs established a four-year international scholarship at the College. Although he retired from television in 2000, David Jacobs is currently producing a motion picture based on Dallas to be released in late 2004.
Degrees will be awarded to more than 300 students, including undergraduate Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees in Ceramics, Drawing, Fiber, General Fine Arts, Graphic Design, Illustration, Environmental Design, Painting, Photography, Printmaking, General Sculptural Studies, and Sculpture. Master of Fine Arts degrees will be conferred from the Hoffberger School of Painting, the Mount Royal School of Art, Graduate Photography and Digital Imaging, Rinehart School of Sculpture, and the Summer MFA in Studio Art. Degrees for the Master of Arts in Teaching, Summer Master of Arts in Art Education, and Master of Arts in Digital Arts, as well as Post-Baccalaureate Certificates in Fine Arts will be conferred.
Lesley McTague, a fiber major from Baltimore, will be the undergraduate senior commencement speaker. The graduating masters commencement speaker is Shinique Amie Smith from Baltimore.
Undergraduate and graduate students in the class of 2003 also take part in MICA's annual campus-wide Commencement Exhibition, which runs Friday, May 9 -- Monday, May 12 throughout the College's hallways, classrooms, academic buildings, and galleries. A reception takes place on Sunday, May 11 at 2 p.m.
For more information about MICA, visit www.mica.edu or call (410) 225-2300.
Maryland Institute College of Art celebrated its 175th anniversary in 2001 and has consistently been named among the nation's very top visual arts colleges. In addition to its academic standing, MICA is recognized throughout the Baltimore/Washington region as a cultural resource, sponsoring many public and community-outreach programs, including exhibitions, artists' residencies, film series, lectures, readings, and performances. Public programming at MICA will expand with the opening of Brown Center in 2003-2004, which features a performance space especially designed to feature work in digital media.
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