Liberal Arts Faculty

Gary D. Sampson

Title Professor of Art + Design History | Chair of Liberal Arts
Department Liberal Arts
Phone 216.421.7369

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Courses  Art + Design History I: Ancient-18th Century | Art + Design History II: 18th Century-1945 | Art + Design History III: 1945-Present | Design + Craft in Modern Culture | Issues in Design: Theory + Culture of Design | Media Arts & Visual Culture: Interactive Zones | Media Arts + Visual Culture: Installation | Visual Culture and the Manufacture of Meaning

Degree PhD, Art History, University of California, Santa Barbara; MA, Art History, University of California, Santa Barbara; BA, Art and Art History, California State University, Northridge

Gary Sampson teaches art and design history and theory at the Institute. He is also adjunct in art history and occasional SAGES faculty at Case Western Reserve University. His areas of scholarship are in history of photography, urban design and representation, and media arts and visual culture. His publications include Imag(in)ing Race and Place in Colonialist Photography, with Eleanor Hight, Photographs at St. Lawrence University, with Catherine Tedford, and “Landscape and Fluid Imaging of the Emerging City," in Emerging Landscapes: Between Landscape and Representation. Sampson also engages in practice-based research in photography; one of his ongoing projects investigates city environments, infrastructure, and media.

Lane Cooper

Title Associate Professor
Department Liberal Arts
Phone 216.421.7357

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Courses  Art + Design History I: Ancient-18th Century | Art + Design History II: 18th Century-1945 | BFA Statement + Exhibition | Design I | Hybrid Approaches to Drawing + Painting: Digital Media | Intro to Painting: Painting History: 1828-Present | Role of the Artist as Producer (EP) | Senior Studio: BFA Research | Systems Drawing | Water+: An Exploration of Water-Based Media

Degree MFA, Painting, University of Alabama (Tuscaloosa); MA, Art History, University of Alabama at Birmingham; BS, University of North Alabama

Lane Cooper is an artist, who works through painting, sound, video, text and, on occasion, performance. Her work has been presented in venues ranging from Birmingham, AL, to Madrid, Spain. In 2009 she participated in a residency at The Banff Centre located in Alberta, Canada, and in the fall of 2010 she was an artist-in-residence at Gallery Aferro in Newark, NJ, where she exhibited as part of the 2011-12 season. She holds a master's degree in art history with an emphasis in contemporary art and an MFA in painting. She has been teaching since 1989, and since the spring of 2001 she has taught full-time at the Cleveland Institute of Art.

Courses  Advertising + Consumer Culture | Art + Design History II: 18th Century-1945 | Art + Design History III: 1945-Present | The Body: Tradition, Transformation, Transgression | Visual Culture and the Manufacture of Meaning

Degree PhD, Art History from the University of Michigan; MA, Art History from the University of Denver; BS, Speech Pathology and Audiology from State University of New York

Rita has received several awards and grants through the years including the Lucry Fellowship as well as grants from The Samuel H. Kress Foundation for their Travel Fellowship and Photographic Subvention Program among countless others.

David Hart

Title Associate Professor of Art History
Department Liberal Arts
Phone 216.421.7302

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Courses  An Introduction to African Art | Art + Design History I: Ancient-18th Century | Art + Design History II: 18th Century-1945 | Art + Design History III: 1945-Present | Media Arts + Visual Culture: Installation | Race and Representation in Contemporary Art + Culture | Visual Culture and the Manufacture of Meaning

Degree PhD, Art History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; MA, Art History from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill; BA, Political Science from University of Michigan, Ann Arbor

Dr. Hart is an Associate Professor of Art History in the Liberal Arts Department at the Cleveland Institute of Art. He taught African-American Art at UNC Chapel Hill as well as Wake Forest University before he came to the Cleveland Institute of Art.

Degree MFA in Creative Nonfiction, University of Arizona
PhD Candidate in Creative Nonfiction Ohio University

Sarah Minor is a nonfiction writer and designer specializing in visual essays. Her recent work can be found in places like Creative Nonfiction, Territory, and The Atlantic. Minor is the video editor at TriQuarterly Review and runs the Visual Essays series at Essay Daily.

Courses  Graphic Narratives | Science Fiction + Fantasy | Writing + Inquiry I: Basic Composition + Contemporary Ideas | Writing + Inquiry III: Narrative Forms

Dr. Moody earned his MFA in Creative Writing from Syracuse University, and his PhD in English from the University of Cincinnati. His fiction has been published by Esquire, The Cincinnati Review, The Collagist, Alaska Quarterly Review, Faultline, and other literary journals. His stories have been anthologized in the collections Best New American Voices and Best American Fantasy. His poems have appeared in Indiana Review and Sonora Review.

Moody was awarded a 2015 Al Smith Fellowship for Individual Excellence in the Arts and was the 2014 Sarabande Books Writer-in-Residence at Bernheim Arboretum and Research Forest. He is currently at work on a novel, and he is represented by literary agent Reneé Zuckerbrot of New York literary agency Massie & McQuilkin (MMQLIT.com).

Olatubosun Ogunsanwo

Title Professor of Comparative Literature
Department Liberal Arts
Phone 216.421.7361

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Courses  Autobiographical Narratives | Culture, Conflict, and Syncretism | Writing + Inquiry I: Basic Composition + Contemporary Ideas | Writing + Inquiry II: Research + Intellectual Traditions | Writing + Inquiry III: Narrative Forms

Degree PhD, The Indirect Narrative Method in the Last Six Novels of Geroge Mereditn, 1828-1909, University of Ibadan, Nigeria; BA, English from the University of Ibadan, Nigeria

The University of Lagos, Nigeria, 1974 - 1990, Senior Lecturer

The Ohio State University, College of Humanities, Jan 1991 - June 1995, Visiting Scholar

Olatubosun's research interests lie in literature in English, particularly comparative studies in African, English, American and African-American literatures within the contexts of theories of fiction and literary discourse. His work is widely published and can be found in English Studies in Africa, NEOHELICON and Proceedings.

Mark Bassett

Title Lecturer
Department Liberal Arts
Phone 216.221.6025 (home)

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Courses  American Crafts History | Writing + Inquiry I: Basic Composition + Contemporary Ideas | Writing + Inquiry II: Research + Intellectual Traditions | Writing + Inquiry III: Narrative Forms | Writing about Material Culture

Degree PhD and MA, University of Missouri-Columbia; BA, University of Alabama-Huntsville

For many years, Dr. Bassett has conducted research on CIA's history. With Henry Adams, he is now writing a book about the school. For some examples of his research, visit http://cia.edu/history. At the top of that page, via the link "CIA at CMA," you can see 100 artworks in the Cleveland Museum of Art collection that were created by CIA people between 1882 and the present. A few profiles of historic alumni, like Tiffany lamp designer Clara Driscoll and interior architect and portrait artist Charles Sallée, can also be explored from this page.

On June 11, 2013, Mark Bassett's 1985 Ph.D. dissertation--John Horne Burns: Toward a Critical Biography--was published electronically: http://hdl.handle.net/10355/35623. This account draws from the novelist's correspondence, which, until recently, the family wouldn't allow to be published.

As a collector, dealer, and researcher specializing in American ceramics, Mark frequently speaks on this topic. He and his partner George Cooper were lenders to "The Jazz Age" exhibition at the Cleveland Museum of Art, Fall 2017.