www.design.upenn.edu/fine-arts
The University of Pennsylvania School of Design is pleased to announce that Ken Lum has been appointed as Full Professor and Director of the Undergraduate Fine Arts program. He will assume responsibilities on July 1.
“In addition to a distinguished teaching record, Ken brings with him deep international experience of exhibitions and public art commissions and a thoughtful sensibility as a working artist. We look forward to his leadership as we build upon our vision for fine arts at Penn and explore how our programs will engage in projects that respond to the urban cultural world,” said Marilyn Jordan Taylor, dean of PennDesign.
Lum, who is concerned with the dialectics of the private and public construction of identity, space, and politics, is well-known as a conceptual artist for his work in photography and sculpture addressing the public realm. He has participated in numerous major art exhibitions, including the Sao Paulo Art Bienal, Sydney Biennale, Venice Biennale, the 2000 Shanghai Biennale, the 2002 Documenta XI in Kassel, Germany, the 2006 Liverpool Biennial, the 2007 Istanbul Biennial, the 2008 Gwangju Biennale in South Korea, and Moscow Biennale 2011.
He has also led a notable career as an educator, teaching at the University of British Columbia, where he was Professor and Head of the Graduate Program in Studio Art from 2000 to 2006. While at UBC (1990–2006), he also was a visiting Professor at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux-Arts in Paris 1995–1997, a Graduate Professor at the Milton Avery Graduate School of Arts at Bard College from 2005–2007, among other educational institutions. He has published widely and is the Founding Editor of Yishu: The Journal of Contemporary Chinese Art. Lum was made a Guggenheim Fellow in 1999 and awarded a Killam Award for Outstanding Research in 1998 and the Hnatyshyn Foundation Visual Arts Award in 2007.
Lum has also been involved in several large curatorial projects and has worked on numerous public art projects for the cities of Vienna, Leiden, Utrecht, Toronto, Rotterdam, Vancouver, Stockholm, and St. Moritz.
“I am excited to be coming to Penn. It is a great and important University, a place of immense knowledge production for the good of the world,” Lum said. “I look forward to helping students develop a more complex set of social and knowledge skills so that they can better direct themselves towards a more open, cooperative and tolerant world. I feel the Penn environment is conducive to great achievement.”
Fine Arts at the University of Pennsylvania
Founded by Benjamin Franklin in 1740, the University of Pennsylvania has a long and proud tradition of intellectual rigor and pursuit of innovative knowledge. Through studio work, seminar courses, and interactions with vital working artists, the Fine Arts programs at the University of Pennsylvania provide an open intellectual framework to foster critical awareness and independent methods of artistic research. Programs offer developing artists the opportunity to refine their methods through engagement with a wide range of artistic media, critical perspectives, and interdisciplinary areas of study including Digital Media Design, Cinema Studies, and Visual Studies. Access to visiting artists, private studios. Penn’s world-renowned Institute of Contemporary Art and courses across the university enrich the educational experience.
The MFA in Visual Arts Application deadline for Fall 2013 admission is January 17, 2013.
For more information about PennDesign Graduate Programs, please visit our website or contact the department via telephone or e-mail.
Department of Fine Arts
University of Pennsylvania
200 S. 36th St., Philadelphia, PA 19104
T 215 573-5134
[email protected]
www.design.upenn.edu/fine-arts
*Image above:
Kenneth Lum, Monument for East Vancouver, 2010. Light-emitting diodes, aluminum, concrete, 20 meters high. Collection of the City of Vancouver. Photo by Rachel Topham, Vancouver Art Gallery.
