Commencement

2019 Commencement Honorees

Home
Annual Events & Series
Commencement
2019 Commencement Honorees

The College’s 170th undergraduate Commencement Ceremony is at 1 p.m. Monday, May 20 at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall, 212 Cathedral St., Baltimore.

Graduate commencement is scheduled for 5 p.m. Monday, May 20 at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall.

2019 Honorary Degree Recipients at the Undergraduate Commencement

Tehching Hsieh

Tehching Hsieh, born in Nan-Chou, Taiwan, dropped out from high school in 1967 and took up painting. Hsieh had his first solo show at the gallery of the American News Bureau in Taiwan, and later trained as a seaman, which he used as a means to enter the United States; Hsieh was an illegal immigrant in the States for fourteen years until he was granted amnesty in 1988. Starting in the late 1970s, Hsieh made five One Year Performances and a ‘Thirteen Year Plan’, inside and outside his studio in New York City. Using long durations, making art and life simultaneous, Hsieh achieved one of the most radical approaches in contemporary art. Hsieh has exhibited in North and South America, Asia, and Europe. His recent exhibition, Doing Time was presented by Taiwan Pavilion at 57th Venice Art Biennale, and One Year Performance, 1980-1981 exhibited at Tate Modern, London in 2017-2018.

Abbi Jacobson

Abbi Jacobson ’06 (General Fine Arts B.F.A.), co-creator of the hit Comedy Central series "Broad City," will be the keynote speaker at the College’s 170th undergraduate Commencement Ceremony. Abbi Jacobson ‘06 (General Fine Arts BFA) is co-creator, writer, director, executive producer, and star of the critically acclaimed show Broad City, which ran for five seasons on Comedy Central. She currently can be heard voicing the character “Bean” in Netflix’s Disenchantment, by Matt Groenig. Jacobson recently released the book, I Might Regret This, which hit the New York Times bestseller list. She is already a New York Times-bestselling author of her illustrated book, Carry This Book. She is currently writing and producing an Amazon series, A League of their Own, based on the 1992 film of the same name. Along with Ilana Glazer, Jacobson signed a first look deal with Comedy Central and Viacom Television networks. As host of A Piece of Work, a podcast with WNYC and the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA), Jacobson discusses contemporary art with curators, artists, and friends including Hannibal Buress and Tavi Gevinson.

Anne S. Perkins

Anne S. Perkins, a member of the MICA Board of Trustees since 1969, served as Chair of the Board from 1998 to 2003. A lawyer, Perkins has worked a special master for the United States District Court–Maryland overseeing the implementation of the Partial Consent Decree in Thompson v. HUD. She previously managed a Ford Foundation arts education planning grant for Baltimore City Public Schools and was acting executive director of Baltimore Partners for Enhanced Learning. Perkins was a longtime elected representative to the Maryland House of Delegates; she later taught English in Xiamen, China, and was program officer/consultant for the National Democratic Institute in Southern Africa and Liberia and vice president for governmental affairs at University of Maryland University College. A member of the Baltimore Arts Commission and co-funder of Arts Every Day, Perkins also served as co-chair of the Maryland Mass Transit Administration Baltimore Rail Plan Advisory Committee.

Howardena Pindell

Born in Philadelphia, Howardena Pindell studied painting at Boston University and Yale University. After graduating, she worked in the Department of Prints and Illustrated Books at the Museum of Modern Art, and later began teaching at the State University of New York, Stony Brook where she is now a full professor. Pindell has exhibited extensively; her work has been featured in landmark museum exhibitions and notable solo-exhibitions at Spelman College Lerner-Heller Gallery and The Studio Museum in Harlem. Most recently, Pindell’s work appeared in “We Wanted a Revolution: Black Radical Women, 1965–1985” at the Brooklyn Museum and “Painting 2.0: Expression in the Information Age” at Museum Brandhorst, Munich, and Museum Moderner Kunst, Vienna. Her work is in the permanent collections of major museums internationally, including the Metropolitan Museum of Art; the National Gallery of Art; the Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; and the Louisiana Museum of Contemporary Art, Copenhagen.

Photo by Katherine McMahon

2019 Honorary Degree Recipients at the Graduate Commencement

Tania Bruguera

For over 25 years, Tania Bruguera has created socially engaged performances and installations that examine the nature of political power structures and their effect on the lives of its constituency. Her research focuses on ways in which art can be applied to everyday political life; and on the transformation of social affect into political effectiveness. She was selected as one of the 100 Leading Global Thinkers by Foreign Policy magazine, was shortlisted for the #Index100 Freedom of Expression Award, received a Guggenheim, Radcliffe and Yale World fellowships, and was the first artist-in-residence in the New York City Mayor’s Office of Immigrant Affairs. Her work has been shown in the 2015 Venice Biennale, and at museums that include Tate Modern, London, and Guggenheim and MoMA, New York. Bruguera recently opened the Hannah Arendt International Institute for Artivism, in Havana, a school, exhibition space, and think thank for activist artists and Cubans. Photo by Claudio Fuentes

Jane Golden

Jane Golden has been the driving force of Mural Arts Philadelphia since 1984, overseeing its growth from a small city agency into the nation’s largest public art program, a global model for transforming public spaces and individual lives through art. Under Golden’s direction, Mural Arts has created over 4,000 works of public art through innovative collaborations. In partnership with a range of city agencies, she has developed groundbreaking and rigorous programs that work through art to make strides in youth education, restorative justice, and behavioral health. Sought after nationally and internationally as an expert on urban transformation through art, Golden has received numerous awards for her work, including the Eisenhower Exchange Fellowship Award and Philadelphia Magazine’s Trailblazer Award. She is an adjunct professor at the University of Pennsylvania, and serves on the Mayor’s Cultural Advisory Council, the Penn Museum Advisory Committee, and the board of directors of The Heliotrope Foundation. Photo by Steve Weinik

MICA Medal of Honor at the Honorees Dinner

Jed Dietz

The Maryland Film Festival launched in 1999 with the World Premiere of Barry Levinson’s first documentary, Diner Guys, and has garnered national press attention for its programming, and has become a sought after event for filmmakers. As partnerships with local institutions like MICA and Hopkins grew, MdFF staff started looking for a year round home. The SNF Parkway opened in 2017. Over 100,000 people have attended a wide variety of film events and interacted with professional filmmakers from all over the world. In addition, MdFF administers the Maryland Filmmakers Fellowship with the Sundance Labs, which has supported 25 first time filmmakers, many of whom have subsequently established impressive film careers.

Search for anything and everything at MICA: