News

At the onset of the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic, at least 20 percent of Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design students lacked access to sufficient hardware or reliable internet that would allow them to participate fully in online classes. The college’s response took the form of the Digital Equity Fund, which seeks to alleviate the digital divide in MIAD students by providing technology and looking for sustainable solutions.

Usually known as the Charles Allis Museum, the institution is temporarily changing its name in conjunction with its new exhibition highlighting women, femme and nonbinary artists. The Sarah Ball Allis exhibition is curated by MIAD Associate Professor and Chair of First-Year Experience Kate Schaffer and includes work by MIAD alumni Melissa Dorn ’96 (Sculpture) and Artemis Sidikman ’22 (New Studio Practice: Fine Arts).

In their first exhibition, Faith Allen ’25 (Illustration) went big. The Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design sophomore submitted two artworks to the Black Art & Design Juried Student Exhibition and reveled in the freedom to create the largest pieces they could.

Unfinished Legacy, a brand started by Milwaukee artist Brema Brema, enjoyed a promotional video created by current Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design senior Hannah Davis for her Digital Media: Video Production elective course in fall 2022. The semester-long project culminated in a three-minute video and three shorter clips advertising the brand.

Milwaukee high schoolers are getting a head start on their creative careers through the Design Internship at Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design. The free, year-long program was recently approved for a $25,000 grant from the National Endowment for the Arts (NEA) to expand the program for 2023-2024.

The Arts Midwest Grow, Invest, Gather (GIG) Fund has awarded the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design a $4,000 grant to fund the upcoming exhibition “Wig Heavier Than a Boot: The Work of David Johnson.” Funding is made possible by the National Endowment for the Arts, a federal agency.

After two years of planning and work, André Saint-Louis ’01 (Sculpture) and Brandon Minga ’04 (Illustration) have finished a monumental public sculpture project for Milwaukee’s Near West Side neighborhood. The last four of the seven neighborhood markers will be installed in different Near West Side communities at the end of the month.

Wyethe Smallish ’23, currently studying Illustration and Communication Design, started re-drawing Disney characters with fuller and more proportional figures this August. The recordings she took of the process went viral on TikTok and resulted in a Buzzfeed feature in September of 2022.

Dominic Chambers ’16 (New Studio Practice: Fine Arts) will be exhibiting his first solo show with Lehmann Maupin, the New York gallery that represents him. The exhibition, scheduled for 2024, features Chambers’ reflective paintings, which most recently explore leisure and contemplation and their relationship with the Black body.

Successful blogger and promising interior designer Sophie Zang ’20, who majored in Interior Architecture & Design at MIAD and concurrently studied Marketing at Concordia University of Wisconsin, used her degrees to purchase, renovate, and resell a Whitefish Bay home for $1.1 million in September 2022.

Residents of Milwaukee’s Near West Side are enjoying their neighborhood’s rich history and artistry through seven unique markers, courtesy of Milwaukee creatives Brandon Minga, ’04 Illustration, and Andre St. Louis.

Photography alum Sarah Stankey ’13 shares the vulnerable and traumatic experience of 90 days in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit in her new exhibition “What to Expect,” hosted by Madison’s Arts + Literature Laboratory as part of the Bridge Work Madison program.

Twelve New Studio Practice: Fine Arts sophomores took their art out of the classroom and exhibited work locally at TASK Creative as part of Adjunct Assistant Professor Grant Gill’s course “Singularity & Multiplicity.”

Dr. Margaret J. Schmitz, an Assistant Professor at MIAD who teaches primarily art history, published a new article titled “Indigenous Temporal Enmeshment in Akwesasne Notes” in Panorama, a digital art history journal.

MIAD students in the Black Leaders and Artists Coalition (BLAC) partnered with one of Milwaukee Art Museum’s teen programs to host high school students for a tour of the college, panel discussion with BLAC members and art project this past Thursday.

Emma May Travitz, Product Design ’24, already a thoughtful and passionate designer, will hone her skills further as part of Nike’s Global Apparel Materials (GLAM) Team during a Summer 2023 internship.