Art & Design
Faculty & Staff
With a diverse range of experience, faculty offer a unique perspective to students in their respective fields. The faculty includes winners of the Guggenheim fellowship and represent varied media, approaches, and philosophies. Their work has exhibited in galleries and museums worldwide including the Whitney, Met, MoMA, and the Pompidou.
Department Leadership
FACULTY
Graduate Director, Visual Arts
STAFF
Tepper Chair
Established in 2011, the Tepper Family Endowed Chair in Visual Arts at Rutgers University is the first of its kind at Mason Gross School of the Arts. The role may be taken on by artists who have demonstrated consistent excellence in their work. While the approaches of each Tepper Chair have been very different, they consistently serve as an inspiration to students as models of artists working at the highest level.
Current
Past Tepper Chairs
Park McArthur worked with undergraduate and graduate students from 2019 to 2024 to explore critical questions about the practical and conceptual decisions artists face in their careers. McArthur organized a series of meetings, lectures, seminars, and presentations on campus by an array of dynamic artists, curators, and performers “to rethink the normative presumptions and practices that habituate artists’ relationships to their own self-determination.”
Kara Walker, who served as Tepper Chair from 2015 to 2019, created a graduate think tank around the themes of “Memory, Monuments and Memorials.” These cohorts undertook research projects and trips to Atlanta, Georgia, and New Orleans, Louisiana; published artist books; and hosted public events featuring exhibitions and performances open to all. Professors from around the university have been invited as guest lecturers to the Department of Art & Design in recent years, speaking on a rich array of topics related to this theme of Memory, Monuments and Memorials.
Catherine Murphy was the inaugural Tepper Chair, serving from 2012 to 2015. Her engagement with graduate and undergraduate students took the form of studio visits, group critiques, and guest lectures.
The Tepper Chair in Visual Arts is made possible through the gracious support of Marlene A. Brandt and David A. Tepper.