Press Releases

MICA names Lisa Strausfeld, artist known for design and technology work, 2019 Wm. O. Steinmetz ’50 Designer-in-Residence

BALTIMORE — Lisa Strausfeld, who is renowned internationally for her work in design and technology, particularly information visualizations, has been named the 2019 Wm. O. Steinmetz ’50 Designer-in-Residence at the Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA).

The two-day residency begins March 11 with a free public lecture at 7 p.m. in MICA’s Falvey Hall, Brown Center, 1301 W. Mount Royal Ave., and concludes with a workshop for in User Experience course on March 12.

Strausfeld is an information architect, data visualization entrepreneur, and principal of Informationart. She currently holds a senior research position at The New School, where she is envisioning a better future for our day-to-day information experiences.

From 2015 to 2017 Lisa served as Acting Global Creative Director of the Gallup Organization. Previously, she spent three years at Bloomberg LP, first as Global Head of Data Visualization and then as Creative Director of Bloomberg View. She built and led Bloomberg’s first data visualization team dedicated to creating a new genre of editorially driven interactive data products for Bloomberg’s consumer audience. Prior to Bloomberg, Strausfeld was a partner at Pentagram from 2002 to 2011 where she built a practice around digital information projects including the design of large-scale media installations, software prototypes and user interfaces, signage and websites. Her clients included One Laptop per Child, GE, the Museum of Arts and Design, Bloomberg LP, MIT and the New York Times.

Strausfeld left Pentagram to launch Major League Politics, a startup that measures and visualizes government activity with the goal of civic entertainment. Lisa received the 2010 Cooper Hewitt National Design Award for Interaction Design. She holds four patents related to user interfaces, has been a Senior Scientist at the Gallup Organization since 2006 and has taught interactive design at the Yale School of Art and at NYU’s ITP program.

Strausfeld has a BA from Brown in art history and computer science, an M Arch in architecture from Harvard and an MS from the MIT Media Lab.

Named after the late MICA alumnus, faculty member and longtime trustee William Steinmetz (1927 – 2016), the Wm. O. Steinmetz ’50 Designer-in-Residence program was established in 2009 to enhance MICA’s design culture by bringing outstanding practitioners to campus to share their valuable experiences and perspectives with students, faculty and the public. The residency was created thanks to an endowment fund established by Steinmetz’s spouse, Betty Cooke '46 (Art Education), as well as gifts from others in honor of him.

Past Steinmetz Residency recipients include Richard Niessen, Chip Kidd, Karin Fong, Cameron Sinclair and, most recently, Conflict Kitchen co-founders Jon Rubin, Dawn Weleski and Zachary Lieberman.