Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) is pleased to announce the 2025 honorary degree recipients, who will speak during the Undergraduate and Graduate Commencement Ceremonies on Monday, May 19.
The 2025 honorary recipients include:
Undergraduate Commencement
Christopher Myers is a Brooklyn-based interdisciplinary artist and award-winning children's book illustrator. His global, storytelling-centered practice spans media like tapestries, sculpture, and writing. Collaborating internationally, his work has appeared at major institutions including the Art Institute of Chicago and the Kennedy Center, exploring history and mythology as tools for cultural exchange and transformation.
Graduate Commencement
George Ciscle is a Baltimore-based artist, curator, and educator known for founding MICA’s pioneering MFA in Curatorial Practice. A longtime leader in Baltimore’s art scene, he has collaborated on exhibitions with a number of institutions, including the Walters Art Museum and the Baltimore Museum of Art. Recently, he curated an exhibit of mixed-media fiber works by Elizabeth Talford Scott, entitled Eyewinkers, Tumbleturds, and Candlebugs.
Both Commencement ceremonies will take place on Monday, May 19, at the Joseph Meyerhoff Symphony Hall next to MICA, and will be streamed live on the College’s Commencement site. The Graduate Commencement starts at 10 a.m. and the Undergraduate Commencement starts at 3 p.m. The honorary degree recipients will address the Class of 2025 with short remarks at the respective ceremonies.
Commencement will mark the end of MICA’s annual ArtWalk event – Baltimore’s largest public display of visual art – which begins on Friday, May 16 and includes the ArtWalk Commencement Exhibition. The ArtWalk Opening will take place from 5:30 - 8:30 p.m. that evening
Please note: MICA commencement is not open to the public, but special accommodations can be made for the media.
About Christopher Myers
Christopher Myers is a Brooklyn, New York-based interdisciplinary artist, playwright, and author and illustrator of children's books. His practice, which includes tapestries, sculpture, stained glass, illustration, and writing, is rooted in storytelling and artmaking as means of cultural exchange and transformation.
Chris’s work is global in scope. He has worked with traditional and contemporary artists in Indonesia, Sudan, Vietnam, Kenya, Ghana, Egypt, and Denmark, as well as the United States. His work has been presented at MoMA PS1, the Kennedy Center, the Art Institute of Chicago, and Institute of Contemporary Art in Philadelphia. In addition to many other honors, Chris is the recipient of the American Library Association's Caldecott Honor and Coretta Scott King Award for his book illustration.
About his practice, Chris says: “History is the story of where you have come from, mythology is the story of why and where you are going. My work as a storyteller and as an artist centers on pulling mythologies apart from official records.”
About George Ciscle
George Ciscle is a Baltimore-based artist, curator, and educator who has profound and longstanding connections to MICA and Baltimore. He is the founding director of MICA’s MFA in Curatorial Practice program, the first MFA of its kind in the country. In 2017, George was named Curator-in-Residence Emeritus at MICA. Before joining MICA as a guest curator and adjunct faculty member in 1997, George was the founding director of the Contemporary, Baltimore’s “Museum Without Walls.” He was also a founding trustee of the American Visionary Art Museum and the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance.
George has curated many notable exhibits and programs in collaboration with institutions that include the Walters Art Museum, Baltimore Museum of Industry, the Reginald F. Lewis Museum, and the Peale Museum, to name just a few. Recently, he curated an exhibit of mixed-media fiber works by Elizabeth Talford Scott at the Baltimore Museum of Art.
Throughout his career, George has challenged students to examine the relationship between artists’ work and the larger community, and the way that art impacts people’s everyday lives.