The Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) is a private college specializing in the visual arts and located in Minneapolis, Minnesota. MCAD currently enrolls approximately 800 students. MCAD is one of just a few major art schools to offer a major in comic art.
Patricia Olson is an American graphic designer, painter, feminist artist, and educator whose works are categorized as figurative art. Olson was born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She earned her B.A. in studio art from Macalester College in 1973, and her M.F.A. in Visual Studies from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design in 1998. Olson's work has been on exhibition continuously throughout the United States since 1973, sometimes in group exhibitions, and sometimes in solo exhibitions. She has works that are part of permanent collections throughout the United States as well.
Hend Al Mansour is a Saudi-American visual artist and physician. Her printed silkscreens, installation art and portraits of Muslim women explore the religious and social belief systems of Arab communities. She earned degrees in cardiology and internal medicine, practicing medicine for 20 years. She immigrated to the United States in 1997 after receiving a fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota. She then pursued an art career, attending the Women's Art Institute at St. Catherine University and earning her MFA from Minneapolis College of Art and Design where she was mentored by Aribert Munzner.
Lisa Nankivil is a contemporary American painter and printmaker.
Kinji Akagawa is an American sculptor, printmaker, and arts educator best known for sculptural constructions that also serve a practical function. A pioneer in the public art movement, Akagawa has throughout his career examined the relationship between art and community, most notably the concept of art as a process of inquiry. His sculpture and public artworks are noted for their refined elegance and use of natural materials, such as granite, basalt, field stone, cedar, and ipe wood.
Deborah Jinza Thayer is an American choreographer, dancer, and artistic director, located in Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Gregory Euclide is an American contemporary artist and teacher who lives and works outside of Minneapolis, Minnesota.
Harriet Bart is a Minneapolis-based conceptual artist, known for her objects, installations, and artists books.
Andrea Carlson is a mixed-media American visual artist currently based in Chicago. She also maintains a studio space and has a strong artistic presence in Minneapolis–Saint Paul, Minnesota.
Michelle Holzapfel is an American woodturner and a participant in the American Craft movement. She has five decades of experience turning and carving native hardwoods in Marlboro, Vermont, where she has lived her adult life. Holzapfel fits the definitions of both Studio artist and Material movement artist. A product of the revolutionary back-to-the-earth movement of 1960s and 1970s, she attributes the expressiveness of her turned and carved forms to the idealism of those years. Raised in rural Rhode Island, she has worked alone in her Vermont studio—shared only with her husband, the furniture maker and educator David Holzapfel—since 1976. Her wood pieces which feature intricate carvings have been exhibited in museums and galleries in the U.S., Australia and Europe. Publications featuring her work include but are not limited to House Beautiful, American Craft, Woodworking, and Fine Woodworking.
Elizabeth Erickson (1942–2024) is an American painter, feminist artist, poet, and educator. Her style of painting tends to gestural abstraction and the themes she explores occupy "the territories of ancient myth, religion, and spiritual feminism," according to art historian Joanna Inglot.
Sarina Brewer is a Minneapolis-based American artist known for her avant-garde taxidermy sculpture and her role in the popularization of taxidermy-related contemporary art. Brewer is one of the individuals responsible for the formation of the genre of Rogue Taxidermy, a variety of mixed media art. A primary directive throughout her career has been the use of ethically procured animal materials.
Liza Sylvestre is an American visual artist born and raised in Minneapolis, Minnesota. She is known for detailed abstract mixed media paintings and drawings. Her current work explores new media such as installation and video art. Much of her work revolves around our sensory perceptions and misconceptions of the world around.
Maria Cristina Tavera ("Tina") is a contemporary Latino artist, curator, and cultural organizer who lives and works in Minneapolis, MN. Influenced by her dual citizenship, as well as her transnational movement between her residing Minnesota and Mexico families, she combines historical and contemporary texts and images from recognizable Latin American myths, legends, and present news. Tavera uses her prints, paintings, installations, and Dia de los Muertos ofrendas, or altars, to explore the way that national and cultural icons symbolize complex identities and can construct shared communities at home and abroad. Her artwork is both humorous and confrontational as she invites her viewers to question constructs of race, gender, ethnicity and national and cultural identities. She has exhibited her artwork and curated shows all around the world, and has artworks permanently installed in several art exhibits throughout Minnesota.
Julie Buffalohead is a contemporary Indigenous artist from the United States and member of Ponca Tribe of Indians of Oklahoma. Her work mainly focuses on themes of racial injustice, indigenous rights, and abuse of power. She creates paintings with stories told by anthropomorphic animal characters who have agency as individuals. Buffalohead conflates the mythical with the ordinary, the imaginary, and the real, and offers a space into which viewers can bring their own experiences.
Maggie Thompson is a Native American textile artist and designer from the Fond du Lac Ojibwe with a focus on "knitwear and tapestry". Her work focuses on her heritage and identity and also addresses cultural appropriation and Native authenticity. She is the director of the Two Rivers Gallery in Minneapolis,
Frank Big Bear is a Native American artist born in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota and is a member of the Minnesota Chippewa Tribe, White Earth Band. As a multimedia Native artist, Big Bear is known for his colorful, abstract display through his drawings, paintings, and photo collages that address various messages about Big Bear's livelihood and worldly perception.
Xavier Tavera Castro is a Mexican photographer and artist. He was born and raised in Mexico City where he studied at the Universidad Autonoma Metropolitana. Tavera completed his Bachelor of Fine Arts in Photography from Minneapolis College of Art and Design (MCAD) in 2014. Tavera received his Master of Fine Arts in Photography and Moving Images from the University of Minnesota in 2017. He taught photography at Augsburg College (2012–2016), the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities (2016–2021), and is currently an assistant professor of art at Carleton College. Tavera's work has been exhibited at the Minneapolis Institute of Art, the Soap Factory, the Eide/Dalrymple Gallery at Augustana University, the Staniar Gallery at Washington and Lee University, the Athens Institute for Contemporary Art in Georgia, the Center for the Study of Political Graphics in Los Angeles, the Galeria del Hospital Maciel in Montevideo, Uruguay, and at ProjekTraum FN at l'atelier Glidden Wozniak in Friedrichshafen, Germany. Tavera received a McKnight Photography Fellowship in 2003 and his work has been recognized with OverExposureMN Grants, Minnesota State Arts Board, and the Minnesota State Arts Board Artists Initiative.
Judith Roode (1943–2018) was an American artist and teacher. From 1977 to 1992 Roode taught drawing at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. As an artist she was known for her expressive drawings, which have been exhibited widely, published in drawing guides, and included in the collections of the Minneapolis Institute of Art, Walker Art Center and Weisman Art Museum, among other institutions.
Aribert "Ari" Munzner is a German-American artist. He is an abstract painter.
