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MIAD Friends & Donors Annual Report

Your support of our students enables them to change their lives, and ours.

Our vision is to be a galvanized educational and creative community, addressing universal needs through our thought, design and expression. Each year we share with you highlights of our college community’s amazing achievements and acknowledge our generous supporters who help ignite curious minds through art, design and service.

Interested in making a gift to this year’s MIAD Annual Fund? Donate here.

A student sits at a desk working on a large woodcut print.

Future-Ready Creatives

2025 – 2028 MIAD Strategic Plan

Future-Ready Creatives charts the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design’s next chapter of growth and innovation. MIAD’s mission to ignite curious minds through art, design and service guides this plan to strengthen our commitment to student success, academic excellence and community impact over the next three years.

Updated November 2025.

Accreditation

The Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD) is a private, non-profit corporation chartered by the State of Wisconsin for the purpose of providing a professional education to students of the visual arts and related design fields. The college offers Bachelor of Fine Arts degrees in Communication Design, Illustration, Industrial Design (Product Design), Interior Architecture and Design and New Studio Practice: Fine Arts.

MIAD is an accredited institutional member of the National Association of Schools of Art & Design (NASAD), and the Higher Learning Commission (HLC), (info@hlcommission.org, 800-621-7440).

The Wisconsin State Approving Agency under Title 38, US Code, approves the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree of MIAD for the training of veterans for federal veterans’ education benefits.

News

MIAD Values Recognition Award: Leslie Fedorchuk

Leslie Fedorchuk, Professor of Writing & Humanities and Director of Service Learning, received the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD) MIAD Values Recognition Award for February 2026. Leslie received nominations that highlighted her embodiment of MIAD’s Core Values, especially Integrity, Kindness and Community.

MIAD Innovation Center and MAM provide career experience

Through a partnership with the MIAD Lubar Innovation Center, stunning campaign artwork by a student at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD) once again is helping to launch Art in Bloom – the Milwaukee Art Museum’s annual celebration of art and spring. Illustrations by senior Emily Porven ’26 are both vibrant and subtle, colorful and evocative, capturing the essence of the event.

Nohl Alumni Award propels lasting impact for MIAD professor

Receiving a Ruth Arts Mary L. Nohl Alumni Award has both immediate and longer-term impacts for Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design Professor Jon Horvath; for himself as an artist, for the arts community and for MIAD students. Horvath, who teaches in MIAD’s Fine Art + New Studio Practice major, was one of three artists and one collective recently given the award, which provides $25,000 in unrestricted funds to each.

Arts education lays groundwork for MIAD alum curatorial role

Nikki Ranney ’22 (Illustration), the new curator of the Cedarburg Art Museum, says she “is so grateful that I went through my Bachelor of Fine Arts and got to experience a traditional art education at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design because it laid the groundwork for the more academic side of the curatorial field.”

Museum Studies class: Hands-on exhibition and career experience

Last fall’s Museum Studies class at the Milwaukee Institute of Art & Design (MIAD) has solidified a career choice for at least one of the 16 students who took it. The class was on the go all semester, visiting museums throughout Milwaukee, meeting with professionals and thinking critically about the role of museums in our society.