Tag Archives: David Brown

Forty years of making fine art matter: Ramone Muñoz chats with outgoing Fine Art Chair Laurence Dreiband

Fine Art Chair Laurence Dreiband (L) and instructor Ramone Muñoz. Photo: Chuck Spangler

After more than four decades of service to Art Center, Laurence Dreiband, chair of the College’s undergraduate Fine Art Department will be retiring at the end of this month.

Dreiband leaves the College with an impressive roster of accomplishments: a robust program with increasing enrollment and plans for future growth; an impressive list of distinguished faculty and alumni; plans for Artmatters, a new area of emphases in public art and social engagement; and, most significantly, a dedication to the importance of the fine arts in the life of the College and of the culture at large.

To mark the occasion, Art Center alumnus, instructor and former chair of Foundation Studies Ramone Muñoz recently sat down with Dreiband to discuss the outgoing chair’s legacy, their beginnings at the College’s Third Street campus, and what the future holds.

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Art Center Inaugurates Fifth President

President Buchman

“Come Art Center—meet your own demand,” Dr. Lorne Buchman urged the crowd assembled for his inauguration at Hillside Campus. “Let us bring to our future the very fortitude we exact from those we educate. Some of the same magic that for 80 years, brought to life those gods of design, art and human expression. It’s a mammoth but vital task. We know how to do this—it’s in our DNA. Conjure and imagine things that don’t yet exist. Designers, design your school.”

On Thursday, April 22, Art Center ushered in a new era as it inaugurated Buchman, its fifth president and chief executive officer. Named president last year after a nationwide 10-month search, Buchman is the former provost and president of Oakland’s California College of Arts and Crafts. Most recently, Buchman served as President of Saybrook Graduate School and Research Center. A trained theater director and scholar, he has held a number of faculty and administrative positions at the University of California, Berkeley.

Graduate Media Design Department Chair Anne Burdick, who served as Department Chair’s representative on the Presidential Search Committee, said that while many leaders in the art and design world were interviewed for the position, just one candidate was both a team builder and a change agent. “Only Lorne had that precise combination of empathy and chutzpah,” she told the audience.

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