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2023 – 2024 Friends & Donors Report

Your support of our students enables them to change their lives, and ours.

Our vision is to be a galvanized educational and creative community, addressing universal needs through our thought, design and expression. Each year we share with you highlights of our college community’s amazing achievements and acknowledge our generous supporters who help ignite curious minds through art, design and service.

Interested in making a gift to this year’s MIAD Annual Fund? Donate here.

Five-Year Strategic Plan

Advancing Our Creative Future

2024 – 2029 Strategic Plan

MIAD’s 2024-2029 Strategic Plan embraces the college’s values in service to our students and our greater Milwaukee Community. The plan – Advancing Our Creative Future – amplifies MIAD’s people, programs and place to ensure our college’s ability to adapt to and thrive in changing educational and technology landscapes while advancing its long tradition of education excellence.

People

Succeeding Together

Key Initiatives

  • Strengthen our Community both within and beyond the college
  • Increase Student Success: retention, academic progress and graduation rate

Programs

Preparing 21st Century Professionals

Key Initiatives

  • Enhance Institutional Financial Sustainability by optimizing and diversifying programs
  • Leverage Institutional Technology and Digital Assets to prepare 21st century creatives & professionals

Place

Building Community

Key Initiatives

  • Implement the Facilities Master Plan
  • Implement the Sustainability Plan
  • Expand Student Housing

(Updated January 2025)

Accreditation

The Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD) is a private, non-profit corporation chartered by the State of Wisconsin for the purpose of providing a professional education to students of the visual arts and related design fields. The college offers Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees in Communication Design, Illustration, Industrial Design (Product Design), Interior Architecture and Design and New Studio Practice: Fine Arts.

MIAD is an accredited institutional member of the National Association of Schools of Art & Design (NASAD), and the Higher Learning Commission (HLC), (info@hlcommission.org, 800-621-7440).

The Wisconsin State Approving Agency under Title 38, US Code, approves the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree of MIAD for the training of veterans for federal veterans’ education benefits.

News

Author and artist Faythe Levine presents MIAD Foremothers

Visiting author and artist Faythe Levine is motivated by reimagining archives and collections through a queer feminist lens. She presents “Queer Investigation & Storytelling in the Archive: MIAD Foremothers Charlotte Partridge and Miriam Frink,” based on her many-year research process for her fourth book, “As Ever, Miriam” (2024).

Florentine Opera partners with MIAD Lubar Innovation Center

The first project Taylor Leinstock ’26 (Illustration) did through the Lubar Innovation Center at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD) will come to life as the Florentine Opera brings its touring production to schools and community centers around southeast Wisconsin in 2026.

MIAD Values Recognition Award: Arma Zeqiri

Arma Zeqiri, Lead Housekeeper, received the September 2025 MIAD Values Recognition Award at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD). Arma’s nominations highlighted her embodiment of MIAD’s Core Values, especially Kindness and Community.

Paris study abroad illuminates creative practice for students

Madison Boeder ’25 found that study abroad trips through the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD) resonated so strongly with their practice that the Fine Art + New Studio Practice major (Art History minor) went on two: Florence in 2024 and, this year, Paris.