BALTIMORE — Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) is pleased to announce Bill Gaskins, acclaimed artist and longtime educator, as the new director of the Photographic and Electronic Media MFA program. This appointment comes after an extensive international search. Gaskins will replace Tim Druckrey, the program’s director for the last 10 years, who recently announced his retirement. 

Gaskins is an inspiring interdisciplinary artist and scholar with an entrepreneurial spirit and a bold vision for the Photographic and Electronic Media Program. He envisions PEM as an internationally recognized destination program that develops thought leaders through photography and media. He has a distinctive enthusiasm for MICA and Baltimore, which he sees as ideal sites for this program, and he is planning a curriculum that will make focused efforts to better prepare students for their lives as artists after graduation. 

"The unique context of Baltimore and MICA is the ideal site to build a transformative, creative, research-based destination graduate program in photography and media where students learn to become influential thought-leaders, and develop for-profit platforms for the production and distribution of their work and ideas within and beyond the white cubes of the art market and museum," Gaskins said.

He comes to MICA from the department of art at Cornell University's College of Architecture, Art, and Planning — widely recognized for its interdisciplinary approach — and has taught at the School of the Art Institute Chicago and Parsons School of Design, New York. His work has been exhibited at venues including the Crocker Museum of Art, Brooklyn Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Institute. He is the author of a breakthrough monograph, “Good And Bad Hair: Photographs by Bill Gaskins,” and he has published essays and reviews in numerous journals including The Society of Contemporary Craft, Artsy, Society of Photographers Education, and The New Art Examiner. 

Gaskins has been recognized for his teaching with Watts Prize for Faculty Excellence Cornell University Department of Art in 2016, as well as the University Distinguished Teaching Award at the New School University in 2011. He earned his BFA  from the Tyler School of Art, an M.A. from The Ohio State University and his M.F.A. from the Maryland Institute College of Art.

"Bill Gaskins brings to MICA a rich and deep experience as an artist, an educator and a national leader on issues of equity and inclusion in the arts and arts institutions," David Bogen, vice president for academic affairs and provost, said. "His transformative leadership will not only shape the direction of the Graduate Program in Photography and Electronic Media, it will inform the larger discussion at MICA regarding the economic and cultural role of art and design institutions in the third decade of the 21st century."

For more information about MICA’s The Photographic and Electronic Media MFA program, which offers a rigorous graduate program in which students explore photographic, lens-based and electronic media through an intensive studio practice, visit: https://testing.mica.edu/graduate-programs/photographic-electronic-media-mfa.