Speakers

The following speakers headline 2010 Alumni Weekend. For details on their presentations, visit the online schedule of events.

Jerry Saltz

Jerry Saltz, one of the most influential and spirited voices in the art world, will give the keynote address at this year’s alumni reunion. See the online schedule for details. Currently the senior art critic for New York Magazine, Saltz will speak to the KCAI community on current and upcoming trends in art.

Enjoying clout as a writer in the arts community for more than twenty years, Saltz has written for well-known publications such as The Village Voice, Frieze, Modern Painters and Art in America. Saltz was the senior art critic for The Village Voice from 1998 to 2007, and his columns from the publication were compiled and published in two volumes as “Seeing Out Loud: The Voice Art Columns Fall 1998 - Winter 2003” and “Seeing Out Louder.”

Active in the arts for decades, Saltz founded N.A.M.E. Gallery in 1973 in his hometown of Chicago. One of Chicago’s first artist-run alternative spaces, N.A.M.E. is a not-for-profit organization specializing in emerging and innovative art, and Saltz has curated more than 75 of its exhibitions. In 1995, Saltz was the sole advisor of the Whitney Biennial at the Whitney Museum of American Art. He recently served as a judge in the Bravo series "Work of Art: The Next Great Artisit," which premiered on June 9, and Peregrine Honig, who attended KCAI, was a contestant on the show.

Katherine and Michael McCoy

Katherine and Michael McCoy will lead design activities on the Saturday morning of Alumni Weekend. See the online schedule for details. The McCoys are nationally recognized graphic and industrial designers and educators, and they have had a profound influence on American design.

The McCoys were recognized in 2005 with the inaugural Design Mind Award, presented at the Smithsonian's Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York. The award recognizes "visionaries who have affected a paradigm shift in design thinking or practice through writing, research and scholarship."

Katherine serves as the Joyce C. Hall Distinguished Professor of Design at KCAI. She was appointed to the position in 2005 after serving as a special assistant to the college's president for two years. The McCoys previously held the Joyce C. Hall Distinguished Professors of Design position together in 1987 and for 23 years co-chaired the graduate design program at the Cranbrook Academy of Art in Bloomfield Hills, Mich.

The McCoys spend much of their time now in Buena Vista, Colo., where their firms, High Ground Design and McCoy and McCoy, are headquartered and where they conduct High Ground workshops for active design professionals. Recent clients of McCoy & McCoy Associates include Tobu Stores Tokyo, International Design Center Nagoya, the Chicago Bears, Cranbrook Educational Community, Formica Corporation, Unisys, Philips Electronics and Detroit Institute of Arts.