From the President: Fall 2026

What We Carry Forward 

There is something powerful about reaching 200 years. A bicentennial asks us to consider not only what has endured, but what has traveled forward: the ideas, relationships, creative practices, and possibilities carried from one generation to the next.

As I think about MICA at this extraordinary moment, I find myself thinking less about a single institution or campus and more about the thousands of people who have made MICA what it is. For 200 years, artists, designers, educators, and creative thinkers have come here to discover what they can make, what they can question, and how they can contribute. Then they have carried those experiences outward into Baltimore, across the country, and around the world.

That movement is at the heart of this special bicentennial edition.

In these pages, you will encounter a MICA graduate student working alongside scientists in Kenya whose careful observation led to the discovery of an ancient hominin tooth. You will see students reimagining an iconic OLD BAY® tin and bringing a new perspective to a brand synonymous with Maryland. You will find creativity taking to the field at Camden Yards, where an alumnus, faculty members, and students came together to give the Baltimore Orioles’ Mama Bird a new look.

Elsewhere, you will encounter artists and designers transforming public spaces, experimenting with sustainable materials, building creative ventures, strengthening communities, and establishing practices that reach far beyond the boundaries of any single discipline.

These are wonderful individual stories. Taken together, however, they tell us something larger about MICA.

Our reach is global because our community is global. And our impact grows through relationships.

A student learns from a faculty member. An alumnus opens a door for a current student. An artist enters into conversation with a scientist. A designer listens to a neighborhood. An organization brings a challenge into a classroom, and students respond with possibilities no one anticipated. Those connections are where creativity becomes consequential.

I believe deeply that artists and designers bring something essential to the challenges and opportunities of our time. They notice. They question assumptions. They make connections across disciplines and experiences. They imagine what does not yet exist and then develop the skills, persistence, and partnerships necessary to bring those ideas into the world. That is why this bicentennial is so much more than a celebration of MICA’s past.

It is momentum.

We enter our third century with an extraordinary foundation and an equally extraordinary responsibility: to widen the reach of a MICA education, deepen our connections to Baltimore and the world, create more opportunities for students to engage with consequential questions, and continue demonstrating the cultural, civic, and economic power of creativity.

For 200 years, MICA has held to the belief that creative practice can respond to the needs of a changing world. While the world has changed beyond anything our founders could have imagined, that belief has not.

As we celebrate everything this community has made possible, I am even more excited by what we have yet
to make and by how far the ideas born here will travel.

Our third century has already begun.