Artist and alumnus Ivan Chermayeff will speak on Oct. 26 at 6 p.m. in the Yale University Art Gallery Lecture Hall, 1111 Chapel St.
His lecture, titled “What Design is and What Design is Not,” is free and open to the public.
Chermayeff’s work has been exhibited throughout the United States, Europe and Japan. His design firm, Chermayeff & Geismar Inc., located in New York City, concentrates on identity, graphic, exhibition, environmental and interactive design. Among their clients are PBS, Mobil Oil, PaineWebber, Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, the New York Stock Exchange, the National Gallery of Art, and many more.
Chermayeff is a designer, painter and illustrator. He has created hundreds of book and record covers, civic and cultural posters, transportation-related graphics, corporate logos, and more since the 1960s. His work has received numerous awards from the Society of Illustrators, the Type Directors Club, and American Institute of Architects, and others. He was honored with a Gold Medal from the Philadelphia College of Art in 1971 and a Gold Medal from the American Institute of Graphic Arts in 1979. Among his other honors are an award by the Fifth Avenue Association for his contributions to the visual environment of New York, and a citation for “contributions to the visual arts” from the National Association of Schools of Art and Design. He was named to the New York Art Directors Club Hall of Fame and has received several honorary doctorates. He and his partner, Thomas Geismer, were jointly given the Yale Arts Award Medal for their accomplishments in the arts.
Born in London, Chermayeff studied at Harvard, the Institute of Design in Chicago, and Yale’s School of Art (B.F.A. 1955). He is a past president of the American Institute of Graphic Arts and former vice president of the Yale Arts Association. He was a member of the Yale Committee on Art and Architecture and the Harvard University Board of Overseers Committee on Visual and Environmental Studies.
Chermayeff served as a trustee of the Museum of Modern Art in New York for 20 years, and as a member of the board of directors of the International Design Conference in Aspen for 29 years. He is past president of the American Institute of Graphic Arts.
The Yale University School of Art was established in 1869, the first art school connected to an institution of higher learning in this country. Today, the School offers professional instruction in graphic design, painting/printmaking, photography and sculpture leading to the Master of Fine Arts degree. The faculty is composed of distinguished artists who hold permanent appointments and a roster of visiting artists whose names read like a “who’s who” of the contemporary art world.
The School of Art has been housed in the Art and Architecture building, designed by Paul Rudolph, since 1963. In September 2000, the School will move to a new facility, the Holcolmbe T. Greene Building at 1156 Chapel St.