The International Arts Council of UMPRUM was established as an independent body composed of renowned international artists, art educators, and scholars who are among the leading figures in their fields. We asked these individuals for their help in developing strategies for educational, creative, and research activities, as well as in strengthening the School's international cooperation. The Council should meet once a year.
Photo: chair of the International Arts Council of UMPRUM Susan Ewing and vice-rector for internationalization and development of UMPRUM Jitka Šosová
"The core of the board is made up of members of the international evaluation panel that evaluated UMPRUM as a research organisation in 2020. We took the liberty to address them because they are individuals with an international reputation and also because they are thoroughly familiar with the weaknesses and strengths of our school", says UMPRUM Rector Prof. Jindřich Vybíral about the composition of the board.
The members of the board are graphic designer Petra Černe Oven (University of Ljubljana), architectural theorist Ole Fischer (ABK Stuttgart), art historian Klara Kemp-Welch (Courtauld Insitute, London), and architectural theorist Monika Mitášová (VŠVU Bratislava). Susan Ewing, formerly a professor at Miami University, Oxford, Ohio, and director of the Cranbrook Academy of Art, has graciously assumed the position of chair of the International Board. Susan served as a J.W. Fulbright Senior Lecturing Scholar at UMPRUM for two years in the late 1990s and is therefore very familiar with the workings of the school.
Susan Ewing was born and raised in Lawrenceville, Illinois and earned her M.F.A. in Jewelry Design and Metalsmithing with Distinction from Indiana University, Bloomington. She was a member of the Miami University of Ohio faculty from 1981 to 2016, and served as University Distinguished Professor for more than 10 years, and Senior Associate Dean/Associate Dean of the College of Creative Arts from 2008 until January of 2016. She was named a Distinguished Scholar of the Graduate Faculty in 2005. In 1996, Ewing was awarded Miami University’s highest honor, the Benjamin Harrison Medallion.
From 1997–1999 she was appointed to teach as a J.W. Fulbright Senior Lecturing Scholar at the Academy of Art, Architecture, and Design in Prague; in 1999 she taught as a Masterclass Guest Professor in Silversmithing at the Royal College of Art in London. Ewing was presented with The Ohio Craft Museum’s Lifetime Achievement Award in 1995; twice Ewing was honored at The White House (1993, 1994) by President and Mrs. Clinton as one of 80 artists included in the first White House Collection of American Craft that showed at the National Museum of American Art, Smithsonian Institution, Washington, DC, among numerous other major venues.
Ranging from the miniature to the monumental, Ewing’s works are in included in numerous collections, ranging from the Victoria and Albert Museum in London to the Alessi Museum in Crusinallo, Italy. Ewing collaborated with the late Czech sculptor Vratislav Karel Novák, on two major commissioned public art projects, Konvergence and the Crystalline Tower for Cincinnati, Ohio, and Table-Stůl, for the “Middle of the Table Exhibition,” Solingen, Germany.
