Commencement Address 2011

2011 Honorary Doctorate Recipient and Commencement Speaker

Sheila Levrant de Bretteville

Biography

Sheila Levrant de Bretteville received a Bachelors degree in Art History from Barnard College, Bachelors and Masters degrees in Fine Arts from Yale University, and Honorary Doctorates from California College of Arts and Crafts and Moore College of Art. She was designated "Design Legend" by the American Institute of Graphic Arts in 2006 and a Grandmaster by the New York Art Directors Club in 2008. de Bretteville’s numerous award winning publications on art and culture include magazines books and posters, among them, Arts in Society, special newspaper editions of The Aspen Times and Everywoman. Her posters and fine press editions are in special collections of New York's Museum of Modern Art, London's Victoria and Albert Museum, and Paris' Centre Pompidou, and exhibited in MOCA, P.S. 1 and the Walker Art Museum.

de Bretteville’s site-specific work began with the first public art ordinances passed in 1985 and are permanently installed on both coasts of the United States and abroad. Among these installations are Biddy Mason: Time & Place and Omoide noShotokyo in Los Angeles, projects in New York, Boston, Rhode Island, Yekaterinburg, Russia and most recently in January of his year. . . 所以. . . an interactive LED environment in Hong Kong.

In 1971, at Cal Arts, de Bretteville created the first women's design program. Two years later she co-founded the Woman’s Building and created its Women’s Graphic Center in Los Angeles in 1973, and taught there until 1981 when she came to Otis to initiate and chair the Department of Communication Design and Illustration. In 1990 she joined the Yale University School of Art faculty as its first tenured woman Professor and was given an endowed chair naming her Caroline M. Street Professor of Art. de Bretteville is pleased to be a Street professor because her work most often takes place in the street.

The Woman’s Building that Ms. de Bretteville co-founded is the subject of an upcoming exhibition at Otis’ Ben Maltz Gallery, “Doin’ It In Public: Feminism and Art at the Woman’s Building” on view from October 1, 2011 through January 28, 2012.