giving

To commemorate a $10 million gift to Otis College of Art and Design by Board of Trustees Chair Mei-Lee Ney, the North Building—which houses the College’s BFA Product Design program on its Goldsmith campus in Westchester—has been renamed the Mei-Lee Ney Design Studio. 

In celebration of its Centennial, Otis College of Art and Design will host a series of conversations with world-renowned artists and thinkers, funded through a generous gift from Mandy and Cliff Einstein. The series will provide Otis College students an opportunity to learn and engage directly with major figures in the art world today. 

 Hanging on the wall of painter Kim Russo’s art studio, is a cross-stich sampler depicting a large, masted sailing ship, which she found several years ago at a flea market in Pennsylvania while visiting family for the holidays. “I just walked over to it, asked how much it was, and bought it,” says Otis College of Art and Design’s interim Provost (she is also Dean of Graduate Studies). “There was probably less than 90 seconds between when I saw it and when it was in my arm being carried out.”