The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC), a global leader in art and design education, announced the appointment of Arnold J. Kemp as the School’s dean of graduate studies. Concurrent with this appointment, Kemp joins the faculty of the Department of Painting and Drawing as a professor. Kemp comes to SAIC from Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) where he is an associate professor and the chair of the Department of Painting and Printmaking.
Arnold J. Kemp has been making and exhibiting critically engaging art for 25 years while concurrently writing and publishing critical and creative texts. Since 2009, he has served as a mentor for graduate students in a full-time academic administration role at Pacific Northwest College of Art and VCU. While at VCU, Kemp introduced a rigorously diverse visiting artist lecture series, established a new curriculum and brought a global perspective to courses in professional practices for graduate students. Prior to that, he was the chair of the Master of Fine Arts in Visual Studies Program at the Pacific Northwest College of Art. He also worked as one of the founding curators of San Francisco’s Yerba Buena Center for the Arts.
“We’re thrilled to have Arnold join us as our dean of graduate studies at the School of the Art Institute of Chicago,” said Lisa Wainwright, SAIC’s dean of faculty and vice president of academic affairs. “The many roles he has played as an artist, curator, writer and lecturer are symbiotic with his personal research, art work and passion for preparing interdisciplinary artists for a lifetime of creative practice. Having the mindset of the artist and scholar within the School’s leadership is key to what makes SAIC, and its graduate programs in particular, so influential.”
