Samuel Hoi
Samuel Hoi is president of Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA) in Baltimore. An innovative leader in higher education, he is dedicated to expanding the platform for and impact of art and design education and creative professionals, and to promoting equitable pathways to education and opportunity. At MICA, he initiated a large-scale creative entrepreneurship program, which includes a major venture competition for art and design students, and a campus-wide DEIG (diversity, equity, inclusion, and globalization) integration effort. He also conceived and helped create the Baltimore Creatives Acceleration Network (B/CAN) project.
Transcript
[The words “Art is” appear, followed by scrolling words…Empathy, Political, Hope, Powerful, Social Change…it stops at a Human Right. Art Is a Human Right.]
Samuel Hoi, president of the Maryland Institute College of Art: Art is a way to shift reality and make impact beyond the cultural field. For example, at the height of the European migrant crisis, Joe Murphy and Joe Robertson of Good Chance Theatre, they heard about this refugee and migrant camp in northern France.
[Migrants build a hemispherical thin-shell structure covered in white tarp. It transforms into a performance space with migrants singing, dancing, performing, and projecting visuals onto the white walls.]
They work with these refugees from different countries, different circumstances, and created this communal cultural space.
Joe Murphy, Good Chance Theater: The need for expression—that is as important as food and shelter.
[A protestor holds a sign that says “Humanity Sees No Borders”.]
Samuel: They brought international attention to it. That’s bringing art and life together. The art in this case is genuine, authentic, collaborative. It is a piece of art, but at the same time it has so many other possibilities.
[The words “Art is” appear, followed by scrolling words…a Human Right, Expression, Change, Creativity, Healing…it stops at Justice. Hashtag Art Is Justice. Agree? Share this video.]
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Previously, Hoi served as president of Otis College of Art and Design in Los Angeles, where he launched the Otis Report on the Creative Economy of the Los Angeles Region and the Otis Report on the Creative Economy of California. He also shepherded a required curriculum involving community engagement that placed art and design education in real-life collaborations and context. Prior to that, as dean of the Corcoran College of Art and Design in Washington, DC, he created a visual arts program serving inner-city youth that received a National Multicultural Institute Award and a Coming Up Taller Award from the President’s Committee on Arts and Humanities.
Born and raised in Hong Kong, Hoi immigrated to the US as a teenager. He received his BA from Columbia College and his JD from Columbia Law School. He subsequently obtained an AAS degree in illustration from Parsons School of Design. He holds honorary doctorates from the Corcoran College of Art and Design and Otis College of Art and Design, and was decorated in 2006 by the French government as an Officer of the Ordre des Palmes Académiques. Hoi serves on and has chaired the boards of the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design (AICAD) and United States Artists (USA). He also serves on the boards of National Arts Strategies (NAS), the National Advisory Board of the Strategic National Arts Alumni Project (SNAAP), and the Greater Baltimore Cultural Alliance (GBCA).
