A Season of Transformation
The start of the academic year always marks a season of transformation and transition. At the Stamps School, fall 2026 is the beginning of a defining moment of both change and new possibility for students, faculty and the entire Stamps community.
As we welcome students back, it’s easy to think of the new academic year as something that belongs to current students, and it does, but we’d argue it also belongs to all of us, too. This year brings many reasons for excitement. None bigger than our collective work to reimagine the home of the Stamps School, the Art & Architecture Building. Since art and design has occupied that space for over 50 years, I’m sure many of you who have studied and created in this hallowed North Campus space have ideas for how we might think about renovating and expanding this building to meet the needs of our community a half century later. This year, we have also launched new academic opportunities for graduate and undergraduate students, and we are thinking strategically about how we might evolve curricular offerings while retaining our steadfast commitment to the unique interdisciplinary educational experience where our students can thrive and prepare for their futures.
Capital Project Study
On August 26, we officially launched the Capital Project Study with SO-IL (Solid Objectives-Idenburg Liu), the internationally renowned architectural firm that was selected to lead a renovation of the Art & Architecture building with dedicated expansion for Stamps.
The Capital Project Study is an important step that we are pursuing with our colleagues at Taubman College about the future of the Art & Architecture Building which first opened in 1974. We anticipate that the study will take approximately nine months to complete, and will eventually be sent on to university leadership and the Board of Regents for review. We will continue to provide updates on this exciting endeavor as the work progresses and we look forward to your support throughout the multi-year process.
Offering More Students a Stamps Experience
The Stamps School student body is on campus, pursuing their education, their creative practice, and their future. We begin the academic year with 789 undergraduate and 20 graduate students at the Stamps School. Among the undergraduate students are 179 incoming first year and 31 transfer students.
This fall, we are welcoming more non-majors into classes to provide the chance for U‑M students to have a true art and design education through Stamps. This effort includes offering non-major classes on central campus for the first time, and we look forward to creating more of these opportunities in the years ahead.
Graduate Program Update
After an admissions pause Winter of 2022, the Stamps School launched a faculty-led assessment of the Master of Integrative Design program. As a result of those efforts, this fall we have relaunched the program as a Master of Design (MDes) in Design, with MDes Program Director and Associate Professor Sara Dean at the helm. Five individuals representing a range of experience are part of this new first year cohort, and are being taught by many members of our tenure and tenure-track faculty.
We now start the year with two graduate programs, one in Design, and one in Art, both with renewed curriculum. Catherine B. Heller Collegiate Professor of Art Angela Washko is the MFA Director, who is leading, along with tenure and tenure-track faculty, 14 first and second year graduate students through the program.
Fall Exhibition & Events Season
If you are in Ann Arbor, there are so many options this fall for attending Stamps events and exhibitions. Our creative community’s brilliance is on full display, and we invite you to check out all of the compelling presentations.
The Penny W. Stamps Speaker Series returns with a dynamic line-up. Stamps MFA alum and renowned artist Cosmo Whyte is returning to Ann Arbor to be a featured speaker at the Speaker Series on September 24, and to welcome visitors to a reception of his exhibition at the Stamps Gallery entitled Under the Quiet, Beyond the Eye: Image, Memory, and the Afterlives of Empire.
The first student exhibition is already underway throughout the Art & Architecture Building. The 2026 Second Year Studio Exhibition runs through October 18 and is a showcase of second year student work. There is an opening reception on October 1 from 1 to 2:30 p.m., and we encourage you to come and experience this show and congratulate these artists and designers on their excellent work.
Holly Bass, the Roman J. Witt Artist in Residence will present an exhibition of her work entitled We Hold These Truths, which focuses on three anniversary years — 1876, 1976, and 2026 — to explore how national ideals are staged in public, preserved in private, and passed down through generations. The exhibition will be on view at UMMA beginning on October 3, 2026 in partnership with the Stamps School.
The non-partisan Creative Campus Voting Project, founded by Stamps faculty Hannah Smotrich and Stephanie Rowden, will once again have new election hub installations that will be in place at UMMA by October 1, and the Duderstadt on North Campus by October 21. We invite you to stop by to see these inspiring spaces that are designed to encourage students to register to vote and to ask questions about the process. For more information, check out govote.umich.edu.
Whatever this new year holds for the students here, we hope it holds something good for you too. Thank you for staying part of the broader Stamps School community.