Celebrate the students, faculty, staff, and alumni of Westphal College of Media Arts & Design in this round-up of recent accomplishments.

Since the beginning of the pandemic, “ARTH 300: The History of Modern Design” students have been cultivating the beauty and meaning from everyday objects. That work is now on display on Drexel’s University City Campus and a half a world away thanks to new collaborators abroad.

Besides its multibillion-dollar economic impact, a robust arts infrastructure fosters neighborhoods with more social cohesion and greater community engagement, Associate Professor Andrew Zitcer writes in this essay originally published in the Philadelphia Inquirer.

Screenwriting & Playwriting senior Chloe Tolderlund won 2nd place in the Philadelphia Museum of Art's Collab Student Competition for Groei, a seating system made of repeating elements.

Drexel University and the Brandywine Workshop and Archives (BWA) have partnered to extend and improve Brandywine’s Artura.org, the nation’s first free online database of contemporary diverse art and artists. A recent $500,000 grant from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation will fund the project that will be managed by Drexel’s Lenfest Center for Cultural Partnerships with participation from the School of Education and the Arts Administration & Museum Leadership graduate program in the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design.

Thanks to the generous foresight made by long-time Drexel University benefactor and friend, Pearl Miller Carpel, Westphal College now has a permanent fund to support fashion, art, and design shows. The Pearl Miller Carpel Endowed Fund was created through an estate commitment and will ensure financial resources to showcase the brilliant work created by our students each year.

Omkari Williams — a speaker, writer, podcast host and coach for activists — shared these tips in her “Activism For the Rest of Us” workshop hosted on Oct. 27 by the Pennoni Honors College and supported by The Center for Black Culture, the Westphal College of Media Arts & Design and the College of Arts and Sciences.

A stunning collection of women’s fashions from the 1920s will be on display from Friday, Nov. 5 – Friday, April 8, as part of Venus & Diana: Fashioning the Jazz Age, presented by Drexel University’s Robert and Penny Fox Historic Costume Collection (FHCC) of the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design.

Incoming Undergraduate Student Government Association President Jarod Watson explains how and why students should take it slow during their return to campus and practice safe habits, respect for others and putting the Dragon community first.

Celebrate the students, faculty, staff, and alumni of the Westphal College of Media Arts & Design in this round-up of recent accomplishments. 

Art & Art History adjunct faculty member and visual artist Rami George is a recipient of a 2021 Pew Fellowship from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Pew Fellowships provide unrestricted awards of $75,000 to individual artists from all disciplines.

Mandell Presents will expand on the mission of Drexel’s Department of Performing Arts to engage a broader University and community audience through an interdisciplinary series of theater, music, and dance productions. To better realize President John Fry's goal of growing Drexel into "the most civically engaged University in the United States," Mandell Presents will operate under a radical funding model that offers all programming for free.

In 2021, the Academy of Natural Sciences of Drexel University (ANS) launched the Museum Innovation Fund to provide seed funding to Drexel faculty and students for projects that promote conception and rapid prototyping of innovative approaches to museum learning and engagement.

After a year and a half of decreased in-person activity and a fully remote 2020 offering due to the pandemic, this year’s Welcome Week will offer more events and will be open to both 2020 and 2021 incoming classes to help students acclimate, meet each other and get excited for the new academic year.

DrexelNow checked in with the new students joining our campus community this fall about their past experiences, future plans, and their hopes and worries about starting their Drexel careers amidst the ongoing pandemic.

Several students from Drexel’s Digital Media Department had research projects completed in Drexel’s new Digital Media Undergraduate Research Labaccepted into the National Conference on Undergraduate Research(NCUR), set to take place virtually from April 12-14, 2021.

Celebrate the faculty, staff, students, and alumni of the Westphal College of Media Arts & Design in this round-up of recent accomplishments.

Westphal College alumna Courtney Sabo (Graphic Design ’15) is recognized in Forbes’  “30 Under 30” in the Consumer Technology category. Courtney Sabo is cofounder of Kopa, a long-term rental platform for finding roommates and apartments.

2020 Photography alumna Hannah Beier's portrait of Elissa DeFrancheschi is recognized alongside images of President-Elect Biden, Megan Thee Stallion, and the founders of Black Lives Matter in TIME Magazine's round-up of the year's best portraits.

Tom Quinn, Assistant Professor and Program Director for Film & Television, was awarded a 2020 Fellowship from the Pew Center for Arts & Heritage. Pew Fellowships provide unrestricted awards of $75,000 to individual artists from all disciplines. 

Celebrate the faculty, staff, students, and alumni of the Westphal College of Media Arts & Design in this round-up of recent accomplishments.

In advance of Native American Heritage Month, Drexel University will present (S)Heroes Among Us, a public art event that will be streamed on the Twitch channel of Drexel’s Pearlstein Gallery on Friday, Oct.18, 2020 at 1 p.m.  Three Philadelphia-area artists, Priscilla Bell, BUSTA and Leon Rainbow, will paint murals to the sounds of a deejay informed by native music at 3401 Filbert Street in the yard of the gallery.

“Visioning the Future of the Philadelphia Energy Solutions Refinery Complex,” is a report about  the potential long-term future of the former 1,400-acre Philadelphia Energy Solutions (PES) oil refinery site on the Lower Schuylkill. The report was designed to spark a conversation about how to ensure the long-term development of the site allows connectivity to the rest of the city and yields equitable economic and environmental benefits to the city and its residents. The report was created through a community visioning process funded by a grant from the William Penn Foundation.   

Get Out the Vote poster design competition is powered by Graphics Group, a Drexel University student organization, and open to all Westphal College of Media Arts & Design students! The goal of this nonpartisan, apolitical poster design competition is to unite Drexel Westphal students under a noble cause, highlight the power of design in civic action, and encourage the Drexel community to vote.

Drexel University Fashion Design ’20 alumni Amanda Forastieri won the 2020 Supima Design Competition with her collection Utopia presented during the 13th annual runway show on September 10, 2020. The event was open to all and broadcasted on Supima's Instagram Live with host and renowned celebrity image architect, Law Roach.

It is with great sadness that we recognize the passing renowned professor Walter H. Moleski on November 30.  Born and raised in the Philadelphia area, Walter first became interested in architecture as a child and he later graduated from the Tulane Architecture School in 1960. Returning to Philadelphia he worked for several architectural firms including Louis Sauer and GBQC before starting a partnership with George Manos. 

Shushi Yoshinaga, Associate Professor in the Graphic Design program, led a group of Drexel University and Tamagawa University students in a joint study, “Aging, Technology and Japanese Culture” to research the challenging issues of an aging society in Japan.

The Interior Design and Architecture programs of Westphal College received commendation from highly respected DesignIntelligence. The publication surveyed 9,000 hiring professionals, 4,200 professional practice organizations, and over 6,000 students. This year’s rankings are for 12 different areas of focus, and Westphal is recognized in 11 of these 12 categories. Additionally, we are pleased to report that our Architecture program was ranked among the Most Admired Architecture programs in the nation.

Drexel University’s Department of Performing Arts presents SUPPER, People on the Move! performed by the Cardell Dance Theater with choreography by Philadelphia-based artist Silvana Cardell. SUPPER will be performed from November 8-10 in Drexel’s URBN Center Annex Black Box Theater.

Drexel University's Robert and Penny Fox Historic Costume Collection (FHCC) of the Westphal College of Media Arts & Design will showcase the many revolving styles of women’s suits with its next exhibition Suit Yourself! 75 Years of Powerful Style Friday, opening Oct. 11 through Thursday, March 13.

The Department of Cinema & Television’s Nicholas Natalicchio wears many hats: adjunct instructor for the Film & Television program, Post Production Facilities Manager, Executive Producer for Dragon Productions—the department’s student-staffed video production company—and independent filmmaker and multimedia professional. Between all of this, Nick found time to sit down with Vivianna Bermudez, Westphal’s Director of Communications & Events, and share some news about his latest project, an award winning documentary short titled “The Tides That Bind.”

“What might this be?” Is an innocent question, and one that Hermann Rorschach asked of a series of inkblots he developed, in hope of diving further into the inner workings of the human mind in the 1920s. Rorschach combined two of his passions, graphic arts and the science of medicine, as a catalyst for inquiry into the psyche – and in this process, he also created art.

2018 was a big year for Drexel University. Thanks to DrexelNow, you can relive the year's top stories concerning faculty, staff and students who were involved with some of the biggest news and events on and off campus.

Drexel students may not know much about the one-month-old club — or even that it exists — but here are some interesting facts that may make it hard not to attend the next general assembly meeting.

This year, six Drexel Fashion Design students submitted work to the 2018 International Fashion Illustration Competition in Korea and all six received awards for their excellent submissions.

After intensive preparation and rigorous review, the Council for Interior Design Accreditation (CIDA) is pleased to recognize the Interior Design and Interior Architecture programs at Drexel University for “meeting educational quality standards and preparing graduates who will contribute to the future excellence of the interior design profession.”  

Two students in the Interior Architecture & Design graduate program won first and second place in the 17th Annual Jacobs Interior Design Competition.

Xiaohan Zhou, second year graduate fashion design student, appeared on Chinese fashion competition show, along with numerous recent awards and honors.

Current Product Design student, Jason Wong details his travels this semester in Florence, Italy on the Drexel University Study Abroad Blog.

Ten students from the Cinema & Television Department of the Westphal College of Media Arts & Design are nominated for a NATAS Award—a Mid-Atlantic Regional Emmy Award—for Westphal's student-produced sitcom Off Campus. Off Campus takes home NATAS Award on October 13.

The Westphal College of Media Arts & Design’s Interior Design programs were recognized among the ‘Most Admired Design Schools in the US’ by DesignIntelligence, a highly respected resource for design practitioners and educators.

More than 200 artists — including 150 dance students from both Drexel and four other area university-level dance programs — will participate in the hours-long collection of performances on Oct. 6 at the Barnes Foundation.

Drexel University’s Robert and Penny Fox Historic Costume Collection (FHCC) of the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design is opening its new, custom-built gallery space with the presentation of The Fox Collection, 2008-2018: A Decade of Renewal. The exhibition honors Robert (Hon. ’13) and Penny Fox (Hon.’13) for their generous support, which made the new gallery possible. It will open to the public on Friday, Sept. 28, 2018 and run through March 23, 2019.

To celebrate the grand opening of the new Wawa on Drexel University’s University City Campus, DrexelNow asked faculty and staff to relay their favorite Wawa hoagie order, and why.

2017 was a big year for Drexel University, which made strides in research and developments that could impact all of our futures.

Ala Felemban, Interior Architecture & Design Masters student, is the winner of the Philadelphia Museum of Art's 2017 Collab Student Design Competition's People Choice Award, with an astounding 1,401 votes for the work AF Partition. 

Do you have children, siblings, friends or peers interested in attending Westphal? Our Summer Programs are now enrolling High School students who want to get a head start on college studies.

We sat down with Mark Stockton, Art & Art History Professor, to learn more about his work, practice, and perspectives. 

Interdisciplinary learning is a key component to our curriculum at Westphal. In the winter term students will have the opportunity to learn from a product designer and visual artists duo in Making Things Move; explore the physicality of virtual reality in Haptic Interfaces for Virtual Reality; develop wearable technology in Pattern Material and Form; or get lost in the oddities of 1950s television programming in Supernatural Drama.  Click to read full descriptions about these engaging course offerings. 

Edinburgh, UK is the epicenter for global creativity each August when the city hosts the annual Edinburgh Festival Fringe (The Fringe) for over three full weeks. In 2017 alone an astounding 53,232 performances of 3,398 shows in 300 venues took place, and Drexel students were there for every minute of it as part of the Drexel Summer Break in Scotland: Edinburgh Fringe Intensive. 

The Drexel Concert Band, comprised of over 70 musicians from across the University, will present Luminescence on Sunday, December 10 at 7PM in Mandell Theater. Their Fall Concert program is curated around the theme of light and the spirit of the holiday season, and includes works by Tchaikovsky, Wilson, Ticheli, Zainelli, & Reed.

Mutant Water Babies is an original musical receiving its first workshop production through the collaboration of Drexel’s Co-Op Theatre Company and New York based theater company CollaborationTown (CTown), and playing at the Mandell Theater from November 8th through the 19th.  

Be part of the prestigious Edinburgh Television Conference Network program-for a select group of young people focused on careers in the industry. 

The University Concert Band and University Orchestra are comprised of talented student musicians drawn from all of Drexel’s Colleges and Schools who are playing at an impressively high level. This term both ensembles will welcome renowned professional musicians to collaborate on their upcoming performances in the Fall Concert Series.

Kyle Abraham, the critically acclaimed choreographer and dancer, recipient of a MacArthur Genius Grant and Artistic Director of Abraham.In.Motion will visit on Thursday, December 1 for a lecture, free and open to the public starting at 7pm in Mitchell Auditorium (3141 Market Street). 

Five of our talented Product Design undergraduate students had their designs on display at the Philadelphia Museum of Art as part of the annual Collab Student Design Competition. 

Lynn Povich, an award winning journalist and author of THE GOOD GIRLS REVOLT: How the Women of Newsweek Sued Their Bosses and Changed the Workplace– the inspiration for the new Amazon original series Good Girls Revolt, will visit on Thursday, November 17 for a screening and book signing event that is free and open to the public in our URBN Annex Screening Room starting at 7pm. The event is presented by the Kal and Lucille Rudman Institute for Entertainment Industry Studies.

Michael Ludwig, Concertmaster of Philly POPS, the largest standalone pops orchestra in the United States, and world-class soloist will lead a master class on Monday, November 14 at 6:30pm in the Main Auditorium.

Over the last 20 years, our Design & Merchandising Program’s Visual Merchandising community window partnership has beautified and enlivened numerous retail window displays for stores throughout the City. Twenty jury members representing different companies from across the City judge the entries and our student designed and installed windows were the only finalists in the category of Best Window Design.

In 1904 Dublin poverty and political unrest grip a city struggling for independence just as the Irish National Theatre of Ireland is taking off. In Drexel University’s Co-Op Theater Company production of “Dublin by Lamplight” 40 different characters, represented by a cast of six, cycle through many narratives: Will the King of England be assassinated? Will the laundry girl get her big break? Will the show go on? The show, which is co-produced by Inis Nua Theatre Company, will open in November at Mandell Theater as part of Drexel’s Mandell Professional in Residence Project.

Our Graphic Design Program had an outstanding summer receiving recognition from The University & College Designers Association (UCDA) Annual competition, The Journal of Art & Design’s Creative Quarterly 45, and the Annual GDUSA American Graphic Design Awards. 

Drexel’s Museum Leadership Program will welcome celebrated Philadelphia artist, John Dowell Jr., for a lecture on Wednesday, October 26 at 5:15pm in the URBN Annex Screening Room.

National Endowment for the Art’s Big Read Festival and Drexel’s Writers Room are paying tribute to one of the pre-eminent writers of twentieth-century African-American literature, Zora Neale Hurston and her novel “Their Eyes Were Watching Gods”. Included in the events is a presentation of the creative outcomes developed during Dance Professor Tania Issac’s four-week long workshop re-interpreting Hurston’s text which will be presented on Saturday, October 29 at 7:00pm in Van Rensselaer Hall.

The Project HOME Art Program empowers homeless men, women, and low-income families to express their personal journeys through art-making. With ongoing partnerships between Project HOME and Drexel, Westphal will host its third Artists for All Seasons exhibition featuring the works of select Project HOME artists.

As part of Drexel University’s 125th anniversary, two of our Graphic Design seniors created logos that will be used in the year’s upcoming events.

With a city full of rich Italian-American culture and history, we’re excited to host two fantastic projects, free and open to the public on Sunday, October 16th as part of the 3rd Annual Ciao Philadelphia, the Italian Cultural Month with diverse programming running through October with events in Philadelphia and throughout the region.

Our Product Design Program has forged a new partnership with the international, high-end audio manufacturer, Devialet, to develop new products, prototypes and ways to extend their product line by expanding awareness and use by design professionals and consumers.

On Thursday, October 13th, The Department of Architecture & Interiors’ Arfaa Lecture will feature Harris Steinberg, Distinguished Teaching Professor and the Executive Director of the Lindy Institute for Urban Innovation, and Gerard Sweeney, President of Brandywine Realty Trusts for a panel discussion entitled Town and Gown: Creating Schuylkill Yards, focusing on the major development plans for West Philadelphia being led by Drexel in partnership with Brandywine.

On Friday, October 14th we’ll host the Design Research Symposium, a series of events that explore the emerging field growing out of the work of artists, designers and interdisciplinary collaborators whose investigations push the boundaries of traditional disciplines, requiring interdisciplinary approaches, the mastery of new technologies, and intensive research to unearth solutions to practical and aesthetic problems.

Starting this winter, more than 100 middle-school students from Philadelphia schools and community groups will try their hand at being video game designers, with an opportunity to play their games on one of the biggest screens imaginable: a 29-story building covered with LEDs. Drexel University’s Entrepreneurial Game Studio is working with young game designers-in-the-making to come up with new games for Brandywine Realty Trust’s Cira Centre office building, an edifice that has twice played host to the largest architectural video game display in the world.

It’s that time of year again! The time when your stress levels go through the roof as you shop, cook, wrap, decorate, travel and party-plan yourself into a tizzy while trying to create the perfect holiday season. Drexel experts have identified some of the top stress-inducing holiday nightmares and offer some helpful tips for avoiding them this year.

Go behind the scenes of the iconic Emmy® and Peabody® Award-winning satirical news program “The Daily Show” at Drexel University with a visit from writer and co-executive producer Adam Lowitt on Tuesday, Nov. 17. Lowitt, himself a standup comic, will start out the evening with a standup routine and then sit down with Karen Curry, director of Drexel’s Rudman Institute, to talk about how he went from being an intern 13 years ago to one of Jon Stewart’s senior writers and then executive producer.

Only one month remains to see Immortal Beauty: Highlights from the Robert and Penny Fox Historic Costume Collection, the first large-scale, retrospective exhibition of highlights from the Robert and Penny Fox Historic Costume Collection (FHCC) in Drexel University’s Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design.

Co-produced by the Simpatico Theater Project and Drexel University’s Co-Op Theatre Company in the Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design as part of Drexel’s Mandell Professionals in Residence Project (MPiRP), "Watership Down" will feature a cast and crew comprised of students and professionals, set against the work of top-notch designers from around the region. The show will run from Nov. 4 – 22 in Drexel’s Mandell Theater (33rd & Chestnut Streets).

A new exhibition designed by Drexel University students takes visitors behind the curtain of one of Philadelphia’s most beloved holiday traditions, the Pennsylvania  Ballet’s annual presentation of George Balanchine’s The Nutcracker. On display from Nov. 14, – Jan. 31 in the Philadelphia History Museum’s Community History Gallery, Behind the Scenes of The Nutcracker tells the story of The Nutcracker’s 45 year history in Philadelphia.

During the holiday season, Drexel University experts are available to help news media with a variety of stories.

The City of Philadelphia Mural Arts Program officially opened a new public space, Mural Arts at The Gallery, the place to tour, shop, learn and create with the largest public art program in the world. Featured in the space is a mobile exhibit about the history of the Mural Arts Program, designed by graphic design student Randi Dean from Drexel University’s Antoinette Westphal College of Media Arts & Design.