School Notes: School of Art
March/April 2016

Exhibition reflects on past, present, and future of school

An exhibition on view at the school in January presented the work of 38 faculty, students, and alumni as an informal biography of the Yale School of Art, the nation’s oldest professional school for fine arts. With Dean Robert Storr retiring at the end of this academic year, New Genealogies: 2016– offers an “open-ended . . . invitation to look forward and reflect backward as the school enters a period of change and reconfiguration,” said curators John Edmonds ’16MFA (photography) and Jenny Tang ’20PhD (history of art, and media and film studies). “By putting the work of current students, faculty, and alumni in conversation, the exhibition raises questions concerning what constitutes an institution.”

Professor honored for life’s work

The Women’s Caucus for Art (WCA), a national organization of artists, art historians, students, educators, and museum professionals, has presented a 2016 Lifetime Achievement Award to Sheila Levrant de Bretteville ’64MFA, one of four women artists to receive the recognition this year. The WCA awards, inaugurated in 1979, were the first awards recognizing the contribution of women to the arts and their profound effect on society; today they continue to honor women and their work, vision, and commitment. De Bretteville, the director of graduate studies in graphic design, joined the School of Art faculty in 1990. Her design work includes the redesign of the Los Angeles Times and special editions of the Aspen Times, Everywoman, and Arts in Society. Her art has exhibited extensively around the country and resides in collections at the Museum of Modern Art, the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, and the Centre Pompidou in Paris, and in site-specific public installations in Los Angeles, New York, and Russia. In 1990 Yale named her the Caroline M. Street Professor of Graphic Design.