Design Criticism Program Announced
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The School of Visual Arts announced yesterday that it will offer the country’s first graduate degree program in design criticism. Writer Alice Twemlow will serve as chairwoman of the new two-year Master of Fine Arts program, which will begin in the fall of 2008. She developed the program with Steven Heller, a co-chairman of the school’s existing MFA design department.
The design criticism program’s faculty will include the writer and host of WNYC’s “Studio 360,” Kurt Andersen; the curator of the Museum of Modern Art’s department of architecture and design, Paola Antonelli; a partner at the design firm Pentagram, Michael Bierut; the editor in chief of I.D.: The International Design Magazine, Julie Lasky, and the director of the design museum the Wolfsonian–Florida International University, Cathy Leff.
Students will present their final theses at an annual public conference dedicated to design criticism. The first conference will take place in the spring of 2009.
