Maya Ying Lin is an American architect, designer and sculptor. Born in Athens, Ohio to Chinese immigrants, she attended Yale University to study architecture. In 1981, while still an undergraduate at Yale she achieved national recognition when she won a national design competition for the planned Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C. The memorial was designed in the minimalist architectural style, and it attracted controversy upon its release but went on to become influential. Lin has since designed numerous memorials, public and private buildings, landscapes, and sculptures. In 1989, she designed the Civil Rights Memorial in Montgomery, Alabama. She has an older brother, the poet Tan Lin.
Vera Ellen Wang is an American fashion designer. Wang initially pursued a career in figure skating before transitioning to fashion. She worked for Vogue and Ralph Lauren before launching her own bridal gown boutique in 1990.
SOM, previously Skidmore, Owings & Merrill LLP, is a Chicago-based architectural, urban planning, and engineering firm. It was founded in 1936 by Louis Skidmore and Nathaniel Owings. In 1939, they were joined by engineer John O. Merrill. The firm opened its second office, in New York City, in 1937 and has since expanded, with offices in San Francisco, Los Angeles, Washington, D.C., London, Melbourne, Hong Kong, Shanghai, Seattle, and Dubai.
Grace Slick is a retired American musician and a painter whose musical career spanned four decades. She was a prominent figure in San Francisco's psychedelic music scene during the mid-1960s to the early 1970s.
Parsons School of Design, known colloquially as Parsons, is a private art and design college located in the Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York City. Founded in 1896 after a group of progressive artists broke away from established Manhattan art academies in protest of limited creative autonomy, Parsons is one of the oldest schools of art and design in New York.
University of the Arts (UArts) was a private arts university in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Its campus made up part of the Avenue of the Arts cultural district in Center City, Philadelphia. On May 31, 2024, university administrators suddenly announced that the university would close on June 7, 2024, although its precarious financial situation had been known for some time. It was accredited by the Middle States Commission on Higher Education.
Patricia Field is an American costume designer, stylist, and fashion designer working in New York City.
The Art Institutes (AI) were a private for-profit system of art schools in the United States.
Paula Scher is an American graphic designer, painter and art educator in design. She also served as the first female principal at Pentagram, which she joined in 1991.
Saddle River Day School is a coeducational, college-preparatory independent day school, located in Saddle River, in Bergen County, New Jersey, serving students in Pre-K3 through twelfth grade. Its student body is drawn from communities in Bergen, Essex, Morris and Passaic counties in New Jersey and Rockland County in New York.
Mary McFadden was an American art collector, editor, fashion designer, and writer. She designed pleated dresses which were popular with women in high society.
The Campana Brothers, consisting of Humberto Campana and Fernando Campana (1961–2022), are Brazilian furniture designers.
Elisa Strauss, is the proprietor of Confetti Cakes, a New York City-based bakery specializing in custom-designed cakes. Confetti Cakes enjoys a large celebrity following, and Strauss has been featured on numerous television shows, including three Food Network Challenge series, Martha, and Today. One of her cakes was also featured on HBO's Sex and the City as Charlotte and Harry's wedding cake. Strauss is the author of an instructional cookbook featuring many recipes and methods for decorated cookies, cupcakes, mini cakes, and more elaborate sculpted cakes.
Grace Hartigan was an American abstract expressionist painter and a significant member of the vibrant New York School of the 1950s and 1960s. Her circle of friends, who frequently inspired one another in their artistic endeavors, included Jackson Pollock, Larry Rivers, Helen Frankenthaler, Willem and Elaine de Kooning and Frank O'Hara. Her paintings are held by numerous major institutions, including the Museum of Modern Art in New York City. As director of the Maryland Institute College of Art's Hoffberger School of Painting, she influenced numerous young artists.
Lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ) people in the U.S. state of Colorado enjoy the same rights as non-LGBTQ people. Same-sex sexual activity has been legal in Colorado since 1972. Same-sex marriage has been recognized since October 2014, and the state enacted civil unions in 2013, which provide some of the rights and benefits of marriage. State law also prohibits discrimination on account of sexual orientation and gender identity in employment, housing and public accommodations and the use of conversion therapy on minors. In July 2020, Colorado became the 11th US state to abolish the gay panic defense.
Esmeralda Devlin is an English artist and stage designer who works in a range of media, often mapping light and projected film onto kinetic sculptural forms. She has received several accolades including a Tony Award and two Olivier Awards. She was appointed Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 2015 and Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2022 by Queen Elizabeth II for services to design. She was recognized as one of the BBC's 100 women of 2013.
Karen Sue Pence is an American schoolteacher and painter who was the second lady of the United States from 2017 to 2021. She is married to the 48th vice president of the United States, Mike Pence. Karen Pence was also the first lady of Indiana from 2013 to 2017. In 2023, she released a book detailing her life as a political spouse, titled When It's Your Turn to Serve: Experiencing God's Grace in His Calling for Your Life.
Wendy Ponca is an Osage artist, educator, and fashion designer noted for her Native American fashion creations. From 1982 to 1993, she taught design and Fiber Arts courses at the Institute of American Indian Arts (IAIA) of Santa Fe and later taught at the University of Las Vegas. She won first place awards for her contemporary Native American fashion from the Santa Fe Indian Market each year between 1982 and 1987. Her artwork is on display at IAIA, the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the Philbrook Museum of Art and the Smithsonian Institution's National Museum of the American Indian.
Bobby Berk is an American interior designer, television personality, and writer. The recipient of four Primetime Emmy Award nominations, he starred in the Netflix series Queer Eye as the interior design expert for its first eight seasons.
Ricardo "Rick" Griffith is a British graphic designer and master letterpress printmaker of West Indian descent. One of Griffith's best-known contributions to letterpress printmaking is annotation, and his most famed work is the poster “Introductory Ethic for Designers.” Griffith was PRINT Magazine's first Artist-in-Residence. He owns and operates MATTER, a design studio, typography laboratory, and design bookstore, which was the first Black-owned bookstore in Colorado. Griffith founded the Black Astronaut Research Project (BLARP.org). As a deisgner, art director, master letterpress printmaker, writer, curator, educator, lecturer, and activist, Griffith works to create and disseminate graphics geared towards dismantling white supremacy and racism in the interest of reparative justice.
