Welcome from the Dean
In May 2026, the Sidney and Lois Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design held our degree recognition ceremony at the IU Auditorium for the first time. The 3,200-seat venue was a necessity to accommodate all of our graduates and their guests. In 2017, the ceremony celebrating the first graduates from our school took place in the Whittenberger Auditorium of the Indiana Memorial Union, capacity 400. As I looked out from the Auditorium stage to address our community, that contrast gave me cause for deep reflection on our school’s tenth anniversary.
Forming a new school of art and design at Indiana University Bloomington realized the dream a group of innovative and dedicated faculty and staff had sustained for decades. These visionary colleagues knew that in convening the university’s art and design programs from across campus, the school could become something greater than the sum of its constituent parts, as our mission statement expresses:
The Eskenazi School advances creative practice, research, and education across art, architecture, design, and merchandising in service of our students, state, and beyond. As a unique community, we embody the liberal arts, encourage lifelong creative inquiry, embrace adaptability, drive innovation, shape culture, and fuel creativity in an evolving world.
When I was selected to be the school’s founding dean, this dream became my own dream … and labor of love. Returning to Bloomington is a fantasy for many IU graduates, and I was no exception. I had first arrived here in 1982 as a wide-eyed transfer student hoping to be accepted into the B.F.A. program in graphic design. From my earliest days on campus, I could tell I had found home. In Professor Bill Itter’s Color Fundamentals course, I encountered a standard of excellence, craft, and aesthetics that set a new bar for my artistic and design work. As I sought to meet that bar, I developed creative confidence and passion beyond my previous capacities. The intellectual challenge and design inspiration the program provided fueled my artistic drive and shaped the trajectory of my career as a graphic designer and educator.
Bill and I kept in touch throughout the years, exchanging self-designed holiday cards. When I returned as founding dean in 2016, Bill was one of the first people to welcome me back. He had retired from teaching but remained a fixture of our community until his passing in June 2025. I miss his abiding presence but carry on in the conviction that the Eskenazi School embodies the culture of excellence he was so instrumental in building.
In the following pages, we invite you to go back even further in our history, starting in 1895 with the first art coursework at IUB, ramping up in the 1940s with efforts to grow the school and start a museum, and culminating in the dedication of the school in 2016. Following three decades of informal conversations, the programs in Studio Art, Merchandising, Interior Design, and Fashion Design formally came together, adding Comprehensive Design and master’s degrees in architecture and design leadership along the way. The school’s unique non-departmental structure has allowed us to optimize the potential inherent in our disciplines’ adjacency. Students in our school experience the continuum of the creative process whether within an art, design, or merchandising context from imagination through iteration and into the domain of the end-user or audience.
IU is an exceptional institution, and I am honored to have had this once-in-a-lifetime opportunity to be a part of making it even better. The challenge of building a new school with a strong team and providing new, relevant opportunities to our students has been energizing and satisfying beyond words. From the beginning, I found it inspiring that so many faculty and staff came together with such energy, and in unanimity. Our shared values of innovation, excellence, collaboration, inclusion, and engagement united our actions from the creation of foundational governance, practices, and strategic plans through the challenges of a pandemic and continue to be our touchstone through the dramatic changes in the higher education landscape.
The larger university community has offered rich opportunities for collaborations and partnerships across disciplines within the College and across campus. In addition, through curricular and co-curricular initiatives and entrepreneurial opportunities, we have formed strong connections to IU alumni, the business community, and national and international organizations and institutions. From day one, we have built a strong network and culture and have always welcomed conversations with anyone who is interested in collaboration and connection. I have loved working with the IU community to develop a shared vision that results in positive and progressive impact through research, teaching, and service. Such dynamic programs, both established and new, have sent our graduates into the world where they can exponentially share those positive and powerful lessons, embodying our strategic vision:
The Eskenazi School empowers tomorrow’s artists, architects, designers, and merchandisers to revolutionize, reshape, and renew our world.
Peg Faimon
Founding Dean and Professor