IU Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design

06/01/2026

Luke Allsbrook (BFA ‘95, Studio Art) is the only American artist ever to have served as royal tour artist to the King of England.

In 2005, Allsbrook served as royal tour artist to HM King Charles III (then Prince of Wales), a tradition the king started 40 years ago to document his state tours and to help artists. Allsbrook travelled with the royal staff for five days throughout the San Francisco area of which he painted and sketched scenes. Allsbrook created a landscape painting in Marin County, California, which was included in an exhibition at Buckingham Palace in 2025. Covered on CNN Travel (link in our bio), the exhibition featured other artists that previously served as royal tour artist to HM King Charles III on his state tours to various countries.

Allsbrook’s body of work consists of landscape and seascape paintings, some of which are housed in the collections of The US Department of State, Mercedes Benz, and Christopher Forbes.

You can learn more about Allsbrook’s paintings and accomplishments by visiting his website.

🔗 https://www.lukeallsbrook.com/

📸 Courtesy photo from Luke Allsbrook.

05/29/2026

Paintings by Eskenazi School alumnus Ben Cowan (MFA '11) were named among the best of New York's spring art fairs in The Wall Street Journal. "For those who feel that the contemporary art world is awash in the profane," wrote the reviewer, "Mr. Cowan's work offers a taste of the sacred." Read the review at https://eskenazi.indiana.edu/news/2026/2026-05-14-painting-alum-wsj.html

IU College of Arts and Sciences
Indiana University Alumni Association
Indiana University

Photo of Ben Cowan's "Memling Praying Hands and Eye," 2026. courtesy Deanna Evans.

05/22/2026

Eskenazi School assistant professor (Painting) Dominic Mangila currently has six large-scale paintings on exhibit at the HIVE Art Fair in Seoul, South Korea. These paintings explore the potential relationships between the formation of Taal Volcano in the Philippines, quantum physics and painterly abstraction.

Mangila uses abstraction as a material and conceptual “recording apparatus” of his attempts to imagine the Taal Volcano as it has been forming over the past half million years—and how it continues to morph infinitely into the future.

HIVE Art Fair 2026
COEX Magok, Seoul
May 21–24

1. “Seamount”, 2. “West Philippine Sea”, 3. “Viscosity”, and 4. Dominic Mangila. Images by Dominic Mangila.

05/13/2026

05/10/2026

You did it! Congratulations, Eskenazi School graduates!

05/08/2026

05/06/2026

On April 24, a record number of students from across five programs of the Eskenazi School were inducted into Phi Beta Kappa (PBK), the oldest and most prestigious academic honor society in the country. Only a select number of students at just 10 per cent of American universities and colleges are elected to PBK annually.

We congratulate the following students elected this spring:

Kennedi Bruns, Victoria Taperova, and Camila V. Trujillo from Comprehensive Design; Autumn Chilenski, Fiona Deng, Kate Chloe Hutner, and Katherine La Torre from Fashion Design; Liliana Gonzales Chavez and Tara Kwok from Interior Design; Cate Rettig and Bailey Elizabeth Scott from Merchandising; and Jocelyn M. Payne from the Studio Art BFA program.

Our graduating class also includes the following previously inducted PBK members: Carina Wang (Comp Design); Emmi Hall, Grace Hoffman, and Elisabeth Velasquez (Interior Design); and Jenna Eidson (Studio Art B.F.A.).

Photos by Anna Powell Denton

IU College of Arts and Sciences
Phi Beta Kappa Society
Indiana University

05/01/2026

Eskenazi School photography professor Osamu James Nakagawa has received Indiana University Bloomington's Distinguished Faculty Research Award. Ruth N. Halls Professor and Distinguished Professor in the school's Studio Art program, Nakagawa is an internationally renowned artist whose current work explores the legacy of Japanese-American internment during WW2. Learn about the award at https://eskenazi.indiana.edu/news/2026/2026-04-28-nakagawa-distinguished-faculty-award.html and read this recent review of about Nakagawa's installation at FotoFest Houston: https://eskenazi.indiana.edu/news/2026/2026-03-17-nakagawa-houston-paper-city.html
IU College of Arts and Sciences

04/30/2026

On The State of Inquiry podcast, we are pairing up faculty from across the Eskenazi School and discovering the intersections of their research and artistic practice. Cydni Robertson (left) and Leticia Pardo (center) both work to reintegrate the human story—and in particular, the worker’s story—into their research and teaching about, respectively, the global apparel industry, and architecture. Tune in for this episode later this summer when our season, “Design in Service of Humanity” drops at a podcast platform near you. Learn more about “The State of Inquiry,” the IU research podcast, at https://www.ipm.org/show/stateofinquiry