Faculty & Staff

Gerry Beegan
(he/him/his)
MFA in Design Director, Professor
Art & Design

As designers we have to consider the profound power of the distributed message. We have a huge responsibility in crafting our work, and we need to be aware of our audiences and be reflective and responsible for our designs.

Degrees & Accomplishments
MA in History of Design, Middlesex University, London
Served as Interim Dean of Mason Gross School of the Arts
Served as Chair and Undergraduate Director of the Department of Art & Design at Mason Gross School of the Arts
Biography

Professor Gerry Beegan is a design historian, curator, and designer who teaches at Rutgers University. Professor Beegan’s research focuses on print media, audiences, activism, and urbanism. His most recent project is the exhibition and catalog Angela Davis — Seize the Time. The catalog, co-edited with Donna Gustafson, was published in 2020 by Hirmer Press distributed by University of Chicago Press. Professor Beegan co-curated with Donna Gustafson and also designed the exhibition which opened at the Rutgers University Jane Voorhees Zimmerli Art Museum in September 2021 supported by grants from the Andy Warhol Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. The exhibition and catalog have been reviewed in hyperallergic, The Brooklyn Rail, LA Weekly, Art in America, and Women’s Art Journal among others. Professor Beegan organized the programing for the exhibition including Three Archival Events presented online in October 2021. The topics included Issues in Black Archival Work, Artists and Archives, and Archiving the Invisible: Black Sonic Archives. On May 7, 202,2 he organized Walls/Gates/Bridges An Anti-Carceral Gathering at the Zimmerli with Dr. Keeanga Yamahtta Taylor of Princeton University, Naffesah Goldsmith, of Prison Justice Watch, and other activists. In September 2022 the exhibition will travel to the Oakland Museum. Professor Beegan’s researches on the history of print media have appeared in his book The Mass Image (Palgrave Macmillan 2008). More recently he has contributed chapters on print media and popular culture to The Graphic Design Reader, The Edinburgh Companion to Women’s Print Media in Interwar Britain, The Edinburgh History of Women’s Print Media, and the Ashgate Research Companion to Nineteenth Century British Periodicals. He serves on the editorial board of Design and Culture. Beegan has published essays and reviews on design history and visual culture in venues including The New York Times, Design Issues, Journal of Visual Culture, and the Journal of Design History. Beegan served the Department of Art & Design at Rutgers as Undergraduate Director from 2009 to 2015 and Chair from 2015 to 2019 before serving as Interim Dean of Mason Gross School of the Arts from 2019 to 2020. In his administrative roles within Art & Design he instituted significant changes to carry forward the department’s distinctive interdisciplinary history and create a platform for future development. Additionally, he took a leading role in building the department’s Design program, including the development and implementation of a BFA in Design and an MFA in Design. As interim dean he led the school through the first semesters of the COVID pandemic and oversaw the implementation of online arts learning.