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School of Visual Arts Announces New Design Faculty

The new two-year MFA program is scheduled to begin in the Fall of 2008.

Nicholas Tamarin -- Interior Design, 10/19/2007 12:00:00 AM

The New York-based School of Visual Arts (SVA) has named several leading design critics and curators to its new MFA Design Criticism Department as faculty and lecturers. The college's graduate-level degree program, launching in the Fall of 2008, is the first in the nation dedicated to understanding and interpreting design. On October 27, the department will host an open house.

The additions to the two-year program include design historian, curator and author, Russell Flinchum; New York Times Magazine creative director Janet Froelich; Print magazine managing editor Emily Gordon; New York magazine contributing editor Alexandra Lange; Elaine Louie, assistant to the editor, House & Home section, The New York Times; and architecture critic Philip Nobel.

They are joining a faculty that already includes Museum of Modern Art design curator Paola Antonelli and former Spy magazine cofounder and best-selling author Kurt Andersen, co-creator and host of the radio show Studio 360.

Among the guest lecturers are Andrew Blauvelt, design director, Walker Art Center; Andrea Codrington, design journalist and editor, Phaidon Press; Cathy Leff, director, Wolfsonian-Florida International University Museum; and Deyan Sudjic, director, Design Museum, London.

The curriculum will emphasize "the skills and knowledge relevant to those who wish to write about design on a full-time, professional basis; or pursue alternative critical practices, such as curating, publishing, design management, or teaching."

The MFA program was founded by critic and educator Alice Twemlow and the former art director of The New York Times Book Review Steven Heller. SVA was founded in 1947 in New York.