Otis College of Art and Design is pleased to announce that it has formed a strategic partnership with four lighting industry leaders to develop a best-in-class Architectural Lighting Design Master’s degree program. Leadership partners include entrepreneur, author, American industrialist, and CEO of LF illumination, Jack Zukerman; CEO & founder of The Lighting Design Alliance and veteran lighting designer Chip Israel; leading lighting designer and partner with Kaplan/Gehring/McCarrol Architectural Lighting, Michael Gehring, and award-winning lighting designer and founder of Sean O’Connor Lighting, Sean O’Connor.
In partnership with these lighting design entrepreneurs, Otis will research and develop a fully accredited Master of Fine Arts degree program that promises to provide the lighting design industry with well-trained lighting design talent. Graduates of the program will be adept in best practices in the essential areas of lighting functionality, efficiency/sustainability, human factors, fixture/product design, and aesthetics in lighting interior and exterior landscapes. A state-of-the-art facility will feature an experimental lighting lab, computer lab, teaching and learning spaces, and program office.
“I am truly excited to be part of this partnership,” said Mr. Zukerman. “Otis is an outstanding college that produces top art and design talent. There is a huge demand for lighting designers today, especially on the West Coast, but too few people have the training or skills. This program can help bridge that gap.”
The partnership, to be known as the Lighting Design Advisory Council, will seek additional lighting design leaders and funding opportunities to design the most robust program possible. Capital and in-kind gifts are sought from leading lighting design firms, manufacturers, foundations, trusts, and agencies.
With this new MFA program in place, Otis will advance its mission of preparing diverse students to enrich our world through their creativity, their skill, and their vision, and continue its long tradition of partnering with industry to develop talent pools that nurture the creative economy.
More About Otis
Otis is Los Angeles’ first independent professional school of art and design. Since 1918, Otis has trained artists and designers who are in the vanguard of Southern California’s cultural and entrepreneurial life. From Mattel to Pixar to the Museum of Modern Art in New York, Otis graduates have made an individual, positive, and lasting mark on the world. Otis was founded in 1918 by General Harrison Gray Otis, the founder and publisher of the Los Angeles Times, who bequeathed his L.A. home to the city for “the advancement of the arts.” The five-acre main campus is located on L.A.’s Westside near the beach. Fashion Design is downtown, in the heart of the fashion district. The graduate studios are on the creative corridor in nearby Culver City and in the 18th Street Arts Center in Santa Monica.