This fall, SVA will honor design giant Stefan Sagmeister with its 33rd Masters Series Award and Exhibition. A career retrospective that includes elements of Sagmeister’s past exhibitions, published books, design and film work, the exhibition will be on view at the SVA Chelsea Gallery from Thursday, August 29, through Saturday, October 12, 2024. Admission is free and open to the public. An opening reception* will be held on Wednesday, August 28, from 6:00–8:00 pm, at the SVA Chelsea Gallery, 601 West 26th Street, 15th floor, New York City. SVA will also host an artist talk with Sagmeister on Wednesday, September 18, 2024, at 7:00 p.m. at the SVA Theatre.

“It is a true pleasure to receive this award and to see decades of my work exhibited at my very favorite art school in New York City,” Sagmeister said. “Bringing together all of the different facets of my career for people to enjoy and interact with at SVA, where I had the privilege of teaching for many years, is especially meaningful. It’ll be a whole lot of fun.”

Sagmeister was born in Austria and received his MFA from the University of Applied Arts in Vienna, and as a Fulbright Scholar, a master’s degree from Pratt Institute in New York. A prolific artist and graphic designer, Sagmeister’s diverse client list ranges from the Rolling Stones to Levi’s, David Byrne and Talking Heads, Lou Reed, the Jewish Museum in New York City and the Guggenheim Museum in Berlin. Though the core of his work is graphic design in a wide array of forms ranging from book jackets to album covers to brand identities, his design work has extended to furniture, watches and clothing, as well as to the beautification of public and private spaces from Arkansas to Toronto and Vienna.

Beyond design, Sagmeister directed the documentary The Happy Film and authored several popular books on his personal and professional practices and philosophies, including the recently published Now is Better (Phaidon, 2023). He has been the recipient of two Grammy Awards, the National Design Award for Communications from the Cooper-Hewitt, Smithsonian Design Museum and the Golden Medal of Honor of the Republic of Austria, among many others. His work has been mounted in dozens of museums around the world, and his exhibition, “The Happy Show,” attracted over half a million visitors during its run at various venues, including Los Angeles’s Institute of Contemporary Art and Museum of Contemporary Art. Sagmeister also taught at SVA in the MFA Design program from its inception through this year.

“The Masters Series: Stefan Sagmeister” will incorporate multiple “eras” of the artist’s long and storied career, with more than three decades of sketchbooks, many posters—including ones commissioned by SVA as part of the College’s Subway Poster series—and design work dating back to the late 1980s. The show will include a miniature theatre where Sagmeister’s film will screen on a loop, interactive installations, and even special take-home posters for visitors to the gallery.

Note: The exhibition will be on view Tuesday through Saturday from 10:00 a.m. to 6:00 p.m. and Mondays by appointment, except for Labor Day Weekend, when the gallery will close at 1:00pm on Friday, August 30, and reopen on Tuesday, September 3. The gallery is fully accessible by wheelchair.

*The opening reception on Wednesday, August 28, at the SVA Chelsea Gallery, requires an RSVP received no less than 48 hours before the event date and time. RSVP here.

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The Masters Series exhibition will run from August 29 to October 12 at SVA Galleries, supported by an artist talk at the SVA Theatre on September 18.