School Notes: School of Art
January/February 2019

School of Art creates summer program for incarcerated students

As an integral component within the Art and Social Justice Initiative—established by Dean Marta Kuzma in 2017—the Yale School of Art has partnered with the Yale Prison Education Initiative at Dwight Hall to create an annual summer art program led by recent MFA graduates for incarcerated students at the Manson Youth Institution in Cheshire, Connecticut.

In 2018, teaching fellowships for the program were awarded by the School of Art and the Yale Prison Education Initiative at Dwight Hall to five graduates to support instruction in two summer courses, as well as two extracurricular workshops developed by recent MFA graduates. The inaugural teaching fellows for this program were Ernest Bryant ’18MFA, Clare Kambhu’18MFA, Julia Rooney ’18MFA, Danny Ginsburg ’18MFA, and Nate Pyper’18MFA.

Alumnus named MacArthur fellow

School of Art alum Titus Kaphar ’06MFA was awarded a 2018 MacArthur Fellowship. The grant awards an unrestricted fellowship to talented individuals who have shown extraordinary originality and dedication in their creative pursuits.

Kaphar’s paintings, sculptures, and installations explore the intersection of art, history, and civic agency. He works across genres, often appropriating and manipulating Western art’s styles and mediums to address pressing social concerns, such as the legacy of slavery in the United States and the confluence of racial injustice, punishment, and protest. Kaphar’s commitment to social engagement has led him to move beyond traditional modes of artistic expression to establish NXTHVN, an art space based in New Haven, Connecticut, which will open in Winter 2019. It provides studio spaces and residencies for artists and curators to develop and realize new creative initiatives in keeping with the organization’s mission to cultivate an artistic community in a city plagued by deep and long-standing socioeconomic divides.