Future/History: Hilary Greenbaum + Susan Sellers, Designer as Director

Do you hear that? It’s the sound of the glass ceiling shattering. New York heard it when Susan Sellers and Hilary Greenbaum made their debut as design directors in two of the world’s largest and most renowned cultural institutions. Tonight, we celebrate women taking center stage as design leaders and visionaries.

Shaping the visual landscape of New York City is no small task. Susan Sellers, a founding partner of 2 x 4, known for their branding for the Isabella Stewart Gardner Museum and the Harvard Art Museum, and Head of Design at The Metropolitan Museum of Art joins Hilary Greenbaum, Director of Graphic Design for the Whitney Museum of American Art, in an exciting conversation about designing for world-class cultural institutions. Join us for presentations by both designers followed by an unscripted conversation between them. This lecture is a part of the FUTURE/HISTORY lecture series, engaging the voices defining contemporary graphic design.


Speakers:
Hilary Greenbaum is the Director of Graphic Design for the Whitney Museum of American Art. Since 2012, she has managed the development of the museum’s identity across multiple platforms including advertising, exhibition graphics, signage, digital media, and a wide variety of printed ephemera. Prior to her current position, she served as a staff designer and design columnist for The New York Times Magazine. While there, she initiated the “Who Made That?” series, which evolved from a weekly posting on the magazine’s blog to a weekly column in the printed magazine. She continues to write and lecture about design at a wide variety of universities and conferences. Her work has also been recognized by D&AD, London’s Design Museum, the BRNO Biennial, the Society of Publication Designers, the Type Directors Club, the Art Directors Club, AIGA, and the Society for News Design. Hilary holds a BFA from Carnegie Mellon University, an MFA from the California Institute of the Arts, and has recently served on the board of directors for AIGA/NY.

Susan Sellers is a designer and creative director focusing on brand strategy, identity and experience design. Currently Head of Design at The Metropolitan Museum of Art, Sellers oversees all design in the Museum from brand identity and visitor experience to exhibition and gallery installation. Sellers received a B.F.A. in graphic design from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1989. She went on to earn an M.A. in American Studies from Yale University, where her work explored mid-nineteenth-century labor practices in craft industries of printing and typesetting and the emergence of professionalized design practices. Sellers views design as inquiry into the ideas and values implicit in the built environment, an elaborated journalism that unpacks and retells the world in evocative, informative, immersive experiences. Her work spans the urban, cultural and commercial engaging almost every medium from print to exhibition, architecture and information systems, screen-based media and environments. At the center of Sellers’ practice is a passion for cities and material culture and a commitment to the enrichment of public space through design. She has taught and lectured widely and has been a visiting critic at Rhode Island School of Design, Columbia Graduate School of Architecture, Planning and Preservation, Harvard Graduate School of Design, SCI-ARC and the Scuola Politecnica di Design in Milan. Her articles and work have been published widely. Ms. Sellers is a founding partner of the global design studio 2×4 and Senior Critic in Graphic Design at Yale School of Art in New Haven, Connecticut.

Schedule:
6:00pm - Door opens
6:30pm-7:30pm - Presentations
7:30pm-8:00pm - Q&A

When & Where
Thu, Apr 21, 2016 6:30 PM - 8:00 PM EDT
Boston University, COM 101
640 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA