Journalist Ari Shapiro to Deliver Keynote Address at Rhode Island School of Design 2023 Commencement

Designer Walter Hood and artist Do Ho Suh will receive honorary degrees

PROVIDENCE, RI – June 1, 2023 – On Saturday, June 3, Rhode Island School of Design (RISD) will award degrees to 531 undergraduate and 278 graduate students at its 140th Commencement ceremony. Commencement 2023 will take place at 9 am ET at the Amica Mutual Pavilion in downtown Providence followed by a community reception in Market Square to toast the Class of 2023. For more information on RISD’s 2023 Commencement and to view the ceremony streaming live on June 3, visit risd.edu/commencement.  

Journalist Ari Shapiro will deliver the keynote address and RISD will present two honorary Doctor of Fine Arts degrees to visionaries in contemporary culture: designer Walter Hood and artist Do Ho Suh (RISD 94 Painting). In addition, Ilene Chaiken (RISD 79 Graphic Design) will deliver the keynote address at the Graduate Hooding Ceremony on Friday, June 2. 

Reunion Weekend will be held June 1–4 in conjunction with Commencement Weekend. Reunion activities celebrate all things RISD while bringing the alumni community together and welcoming its newest members, the Class of 2023. Public events include the RISD Craft art sale and WaterFire lighting on June 3, and details are available at alumni.risd.edu/reunions. 

Ari Shapiro | keynote speaker
Ari Shapiro has been one of the hosts of All Things Considered, NPR's award-winning afternoon newsmagazine, since 2015. He has reported from above the Arctic Circle and aboard Air Force One and has covered wars in Iraq, Ukraine and Israel.

Shapiro spent two years as NPR's international correspondent based in London, traveling the world to cover a wide range of topics for NPR's news programs. His overseas move came after four years as NPR's White House correspondent during President Barack Obama’s first and second terms.

Shapiro has won two national Edward R. Murrow awards, a laurel from the Columbia Journalism Review, the Silver Gavel Award from the American Bar Association, the American Judges’ Association American Gavel Award and the Daniel Schorr Journalism Prize.

An occasional singer, Shapiro makes frequent guest appearances with the “little orchestra” Pink Martini, whose recent albums feature several of his contributions, in multiple languages. He was born in Fargo, ND, grew up in Portland, OR and is a magna cum laude graduate of Yale University. 

Walter Hood | honorary degree recipient
Walter Hood is the creative director and founder of Hood Design Studio in Oakland, CA, a cultural practice focused on art, fabrication, design, landscape, research and urbanism. He is also the David K. Woo Chair and Professor of Landscape Architecture and Environmental Planning at the University of California, Berkeley and a recipient of the 2017 Academy of Arts and Letters Architecture Award, a 2019 Knight Foundation Public Spaces Fellowship, a 2019 MacArthur Fellowship, a 2019 Dorothy and Lillian Gish Prize and—most recently—the 2021 United States Artists Fellowship.

 Hood creates urban spaces that resonate with and enrich the lives of current residents while also honoring communal histories. He melds architectural and fine arts expertise with a commitment to designing ecologically sustainable public spaces that empower marginalized communities. He has transformed traffic islands, vacant lots and freeway underpasses into spaces that challenge the legacy of neglect in urban neighborhoods.

Hood Design Studio’s award-winning work has been featured in such publications as Dwell, The Wall Street Journal, The New York Times, Fast Company and Architectural Digest.

Do Ho Suh | honorary degree recipient
Do Ho Suh  (RISD 94 Painting) works across diverse mediums, including drawing, film and sculpture, to confront questions of memory, psychic space and displacement. Born in South Korea, Suh studied at Seoul National University and later moved to the US to study at RISD and Yale. His work draws attention to how we inhabit the public space around us. Many of his pieces defy standard notions of scale. 

His work is featured in collections worldwide including MoMA, New York; Whitney Museum of American Art, New York; Los Angeles County Museum of Art (LACMA); National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Seoul; and Tate, London. He was the recipient of the 2017 Ho-Am Prize and represented Korea at the Venice Biennale in 2001 and the Architecture Biennale in 2018. Recent solo shows have been presented at MCA Sydney (2022), LACMA, Los Angeles (2019); V&A, London (2019); Museum Voorlinden (2019) and Smithsonian American Art Museum, Washington (2018). Suh lives and works in London, UK.

Ilene Chaiken | graduate hooding speaker
Best known for creating the Showtime series The L Word, Ilene Chaiken (RISD 79 Graphic Design) received an Emmy, among many other awards, for Hulu’s The Handmaid’s Tale. She was the showrunner for the first four seasons of the hit Fox series Empire and serves as executive producer of The L Word sequel, The L Word: Generation Q, which has been renewed for a third season on Showtime. Chaiken signed a major overall deal with Universal Television in 2020 and recently served as showrunner and executive producer of the NBC series Law & Order: Organized Crime, starring Christopher Meloni.

Chaiken earned a BFA in Graphic Design from RISD in 1979 and joined RISD’s Board of Trustees in 2018, serving as its co-chair since January 2023.

A series of exhibitions leading up to Commencement will highlight new work produced by graduating students. Showcasing the work of grad students across 19 disciplines, Grad Show 2023 will be on view at the Rhode Island Convention Center from May 25–June 3. 

The work of seniors receiving undergraduate degrees will be featured by department throughout the spring semester in weekly shows at Woods-Gerry Gallery. Installation and work images are viewable online. 

About Rhode Island School of Design
RISD (pronounced “RIZ-dee”) is a creative community founded in 1877 in Providence, Rhode Island. Today, we enroll 2,620 students hailing from 59 countries. Led by a committed faculty, they are engaged in 44 full-time bachelor’s and master’s degree programs and supported by a worldwide network of over 31,000 alumni who demonstrate the vital role artists and designers play in today’s society.

Beyond facts and figures, what is the spirit of this community? Through a cross-disciplinary curriculum of studio-based learning and rigorous study in the liberal arts, RISD students are encouraged to develop their own personal creative processes, but they are united by one guiding principle: in order to create, one must question. In cultivating expansive and elastic thinking, RISD seeks to activate a critical exchange that empowers artists, designers and scholars to generate and challenge the ideas that shape our world. RISD’s mission, at both the college and museum, is not only to educate students and the public in the creation and appreciation of works of art and design, but to transmit that knowledge and make global contributions.

RISD contact:
Jaime Marland
Senior Director, Public Relations / RISD
jmarland@risd.edu
401 427-6954