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Carmon Colangelo



Carmon Colangelo joined Washington University in St. Louis in July 2006 as the first dean of the Sam Fox School of Design & Visual Arts. In this role, he oversees the school’s academic units — the College of Art, Graduate School of Art, College of Architecture, and Graduate School of Architecture & Urban Design — as well as the Mildred Lane Kemper Art Museum, home to one of the nation’s finest university collections of modern art. Colangelo was installed as the Ralph J. Nagel Dean in November 2016. He also serves as a member of the University Council and as the E. Desmond Lee Professor for Collaboration in the Arts.

A widely exhibited artist, Colangelo combines digital and traditional processes to create large, colorful, mixed-media prints that explore various ideas about the human experience and contemporary condition, from violent weather patterns and climate, to the anxieties and instability experienced around the world. His work has been featured in more than 40 solo shows and 150 group exhibitions across the United States and in Argentina, Canada, England, Italy, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and South Korea. His work has been collected by many of the nation’s leading museums, including the National Museum of American Art (Washington, D.C.), the Whitney Museum of American Art (New York), the Fogg Art Museum at Harvard University, and the Saint Louis Art Museum. He is represented by Bruno David Gallery in St. Louis, Jonathan Ferrara Gallery in New Orleans, and Flying Horse Editions in Orlando.

From 1984 to 1996, Colangelo headed the Printmaking Department at West Virginia University and was named chair of the Division of Art in 1993. In 1997, he became director of the Lamar Dodd School of Art at the University of Georgia (Athens). Born in Toronto, Colangelo earned a Bachelor of Fine Arts in printmaking and painting from the University of Windsor in Ontario in 1981 and a Master of Fine Arts in printmaking from Louisiana State University in 1983.


Work by Carmon Colangelo

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The iconography of war and disaster have shaped the first years of the twenty-first century, both in the United States and throughout the world. On the Margins brings together a culturally diverse group of international artists whose work engages the platitudes associated with troubling themes, while addressing contemporary social and political conditions through a wide spectrum of styles and media.

The exhibition aims in part at underscoring the contrast between the realities of disaster and how they are presented—what we see and what we don’t see—through the lens of today’s media. Created in the past seven years, all of the works included in On the Margins consider the ways in which war and conflict around the world affect—or fail to affect—our everyday life. The roster of contributing artists is diverse and talented: Adel Abidin, Laylah Ali, Paolo Canevari, Enrique Chagoya, Willie Cole, Luis Cruz Azaceta, Willie Doherty, Jane Hammond, Martha Rosler, and Do-Ho Suh. The exhibition was curated by Carmon Colangelo, and the catalog features essays by Eleanor Heartney and Paul Krainak addressing the themes and artworks in the exhibition, as well as an illustrated checklist and full artist biographies.

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  • 2014 — Distinguished Alumni Award, College of Art & Design, Louisiana State University

  • 2009 — Association of Collegiate Schools of Architecture Service Award

  • 2006 — E. Desmond Lee Professorship for Collaboration in the Arts, Washington University in St. Louis

  • 2004 — Deem Distinguished Lecturer, West Virginia University

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