Announcing the 2024 Presidential Professorship Recipients

We are delighted to announce the recipients of the Presidential Professorship, a new and prestigious faculty honor at the School. The Presidential Professorship is designed to recognize and reward exceptional teaching, professional practice, service, and positive contributions to the School community—all of which are exhibited by these inaugural recipients.

Diana Guerrero-Maciá
Diana Guerrero-Maciá is a professor in the departments of Fiber and Material Studies and Painting and Drawing. Her practice includes a hybrid investigation of painting, textiles, and objects with an interest in sustainable craft practices. She is most known for her unpainted pictures: poetic abstract paintings constructed from textiles. Her largely abstract works engage with myth, iconography, symbols, and color. Guerrero-Maciá has exhibited widely, and her artworks are held in multiple collections private and public. Guerrero-Maciá is a 2023 Lenore G. Tawney Fellow, a 2021 John Simon Guggenheim Fellow, a Louis Comfort Tiffany Foundation Fellow, and a MacDowell Fellow. Guerrero-Maciá’s recent service to SAIC includes joining numerous search committees, the Fiber Council Development Committee, the Grievance Committee, and serving as the chair of the Department of Fiber and Material Studies.

Raja Halwani
Raja Halwani is a professor of philosophy in the Department of Liberal Arts. He has a BA in economics from the American University of Beirut and a PhD in Philosophy from Syracuse University. He is the author and editor of seven books, and of numerous articles in journals and anthologies, including his book Philosophy of Love, Sex, and Marriage: An Introduction, which will be coming out in its third edition in 2025. Halwani specializes in the philosophy of sex and love, moral, social, and political philosophy, and philosophy of art. He teaches various courses at SAIC, especially Philosophy of Art, Philosophy of Sex, Ethics, and, most recently, Animal Ethics. He has also served SAIC in various ways, including as the faculty liaison; as the chair of the Faculty Contract and Tenure Review Board and of the Handbook Committee; and as a member of the following committees (among others): the Adjunct Promotions Review Committee, the Chair of Faculty Advisory Committee, the Fiscal Affairs/Remuneration and Benefits Committee, the Strategic Planning Action Group—Support All Faculty in Teaching & Learning, the Academic Steering Committee, the Dean's Selection Committee, the Part-Time Concerns Committee, the Dean of Faculty Search Committee, and the President Search Committee.

Arnold J. Kemp
Arnold J. Kemp is a professor of Painting and Drawing and was previously dean of graduate studies. He received his BA/BFA from Tufts University and the School of the Museum of Fine Arts and an MFA from Stanford University. Kemp has received awards from the John Simon Guggenheim Memorial Foundation, Pollock-Krasner Foundation, Joan Mitchell Foundation, the Ellis-Beauregard Foundation, ArtMatters, Artadia, Printed Matter Inc., San Francisco Art Institute (Distinguished Artist-in-Residence), and an Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. Kemp's works are in the collections of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Berkeley Art Museum and Pacific Film Archive, the Portland Art Museum, the Schneider Museum of Art, the Tacoma Art Museum, The Manetti Shrem Museum of Art, and the Hammer Art Museum. His work is shown internationally including at Biquini Wax, Mexico City, The Drawing Center and Martos Gallery, New York; The Neubauer Collegium at University of Chicago; Apalazzo Gallery, Brescia, Italy; Institute of Contemporary Art, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; JOAN, Los Angeles, The National Art Gallery of the Bahamas, Nassau, Bahamas; and currently a solo show at Center for Maine Contemporary Art, Rockland, Maine. Kemp has served SAIC on numerous search committees, has been a member of the Faculty Contract Tenure and Review Board, and served as DEI recruitment coordinator.

Jefferson Pinder
Jefferson Pinder is a professor of Sculpture and was previously interim dean of faculty. Pinder’s work provokes commentary about race and struggle. Focusing primarily on performance, video, and found objects, Pinder investigates identity through the most dynamic circumstances and materials. From uncanny video portraits associated with popular music to durational work that puts the Black body in motion, his work examines physical conditioning that reveals an emotional response. His work has been featured in numerous group and solo shows including exhibitions at The Studio Museum in Harlem; the Wadsworth Atheneum Museum of Art in Hartford, Connecticut; Showroom MAMA in Rotterdam, Netherlands; The Phillips Collection; and the National Portrait Gallery in Washington, DC. Pinder’s work was featured in the 2016 Shanghai Biennale and at the Smithsonian Museum of African American History and Culture. In 2016, he was awarded a United States Artist’s Joyce Fellowship Award in the field of performance, was a 2017 John S. Guggenheim Fellowship recipient, and recently was named a 2024 Walder Foundation Artadia Award recipient. Pinder was a 2022 Smithsonian Artist Residency Fellow and a MacDowell fellowship recipient. He has served the SAIC community as director of diversity, equity, and inclusion; co-chair of the Anti-Racism Committee, chair of the vice president of diversity, equity, and inclusion Search Committee, member of the Presidential Search Committee, and the DEI recruitment coordinator.