School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC)
37 S. Wabash Avenue
Chicago, IL 60603
The School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) announced the appointment of Craig Barton as the School’s Provost and Senior Vice President of Academic Affairs on April 22, 2016. Barton will replace Elissa Tenny who will take the helm as first woman President of SAIC on July 1. Barton begins his new role at SAIC on August 1. In this role, Barton will advance the School’s educational mission of interdisciplinary exploration and studies. Barton is a trained architect and designer who through his practice investigates issues of race, memory, and identity and their interpretation through architectural and urban design. Much of his work focuses on assisting African American communities to preserve and interpret their significant cultural resources and to utilize them to stimulate community development.
Concurrent with this appointment, Barton joins the faculty of the Department of Architecture, Interior Architecture, and Designed Objects as a Professor. Barton comes to SAIC from Arizona State University where he is a Professor of Architecture and Urban Design and the Director of The Design School at the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts.
Before joining Arizona State University, Barton held a number of faculty and administrative positions over a 17-year tenure at the University of Virginia. Barton has also served in leadership positions in national academic organizations, including the National Architecture Accrediting Board (NAAB) and the Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture (ACSA). Barton and his partner Marthe Rowen are founding principals of the design firm RB Studio. The practice has developed a number of cultural preservation, adaptive re-use, and urban design projects in the South and Northeast.
About the School of the Art Institute of Chicago
For 150 years, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (SAIC) has been a leader in educating the world’s most influential artists, designers, and scholars. Located in downtown Chicago with a fine arts graduate program consistently ranking among the top three graduate fine arts programs in the nation by U.S. News and World Report, SAIC provides an interdisciplinary approach to art and design as well as world-class resources, including the Art Institute of Chicago museum, on-campus galleries, and state-of-the-art facilities. SAIC’s undergraduate, graduate, and post-baccalaureate students have the freedom to take risks and create the bold ideas that transform Chicago and the world—as seen through notable alumni and faculty such as Michelle Grabner, David Sedaris, Elizabeth Murray, Richard Hunt, Georgia O’Keeffe, Cynthia Rowley, Nick Cave, and LeRoy Neiman. For more information, please visit saic.edu
