Features

SVA Commencement 2025—and Highlights from the Past

School of Visual Arts holds its 50th commencement on Thursday; read about the keynote speaker and see quotes from past ceremonies.

May 13, 2025
Four graduate speakers in caps and gowns stand at podiums during a graduation ceremony, celebrating their academic achievements.Four graduate speakers in caps and gowns stand at podiums during a graduation ceremony, celebrating their academic achievements.
Credit: Joseph Sinnott
Credit: Joseph Sinnott

Renowned author, educator, designer, and Co-Founder and Chair Emeritus of the College’s MFA Design program, Steven Heller, will deliver the keynote speech for SVA’s 50th annual commencement exercises on Thursday, May 15, 1:00pm ET, at Radio City Music Hall in Manhattan.


In 2024, Heller officially retired as co-chair of the College’s MFA Design program, a program he co-founded with Lita Talarico (MFA 2007 Art Criticism and Writing) in 1998. A long-time SVA faculty member, Heller also held a distinguished 30-year career at The New York Times as an art director and columnist.


Over his prolific career, Heller has authored, edited, or contributed to more than 200 books on graphic design, typography, illustration, and visual culture, including Design Literacy, Milton Glaser POP, and more recently, Growing Up Underground: A Memoir of Counter Culture New York. His upcoming title, The Education of a Design Writer, co-authored with SVA MA Design Research Chair Molly Heintz (MFA 2011 Design Criticism), will be released this year.


Heller’s contributions have earned him the prestigious AIGA Medal, the Smithsonian National Design Award, and inductions into multiple halls of fame. He holds honorary doctorates from the College for Creative Studies and the University of West Bohemia.


Read on for selected quotes from SVA commencement exercises of years past, and join the College this Thursday at 1:00pm ET to hear from Heller and celebrate the SVA class of 2025.

Open double quoteOpen double quote
Please, stand up, draw, paint, make films, illustrate cartoons, use your talent to preserve your freedom...to ensure the freedom of others to voice their opinions. Live your lives honestly and with conviction. Be true to the artist within you. Don’t be afraid to really look, to see what’s there in front of you.
Close double quoteClose double quote
Gary Simmons (BFA 1988 Fine Arts)
Artist, 2024.
Open double quoteOpen double quote
Success is not static. Set your goals. And when you accomplish them, push for bigger goals, more challenging goals. . . . Nothing great comes easy.
Close double quoteClose double quote
Lynsey Addario
Pulitzer Prize-winning photographer, 2023.
Open double quoteOpen double quote
Nurture your powerful imaginations, and believe that this world can become the better place that so many of us yearn for.
Close double quoteClose double quote
Roxane Gay
Author, 2022.
Open double quoteOpen double quote
Most art has to fail before it succeeds. Remember that failure and rejections are your teachers. Take that risk; follow that instinct.
Close double quoteClose double quote
Marilyn Minter
Artist and SVA MFA Fine Arts faculty member, 2021.
Open double quoteOpen double quote
Artists are magicians—you can see what others cannot. You can change history with one ludicrous idea.
Close double quoteClose double quote
John Waters
Artist, author and filmmaker, 2020.
Open double quoteOpen double quote
May your work incite, excite, illuminate and serve human need. May you be the harbingers of rugged hope.
Close double quoteClose double quote
Patti Smith
Musician and writer, 2019.
Open double quoteOpen double quote
Art can be a reflection of our time, or it can pose a new way of looking at our world.
Close double quoteClose double quote
Maya Lin
Artist, designer and environmentalist, 2018.
Open double quoteOpen double quote
There’s so much to be learned if you go beyond your boundaries, and now is the time we need to blast those boundaries.
Close double quoteClose double quote
Gloria Steinem
Writer, activist and feminist icon, 2017.
Open double quoteOpen double quote
Let it be said that when you look back over the course of your measured life, you had absolutely no regrets.
Close double quoteClose double quote
Carrie Mae Weems
Artist, 2016.
Open double quoteOpen double quote
What is required are serious portraitists—people who know how to look into someone’s eyes and see a life. Not only see a person’s past but see their future. In a time of massive dehumanization of nine-tenths of the planet, this is a time for humanities to step forward.
Close double quoteClose double quote
Peter Sellars
Opera and stage director, 2015.
Open double quoteOpen double quote
Use the pen, use the pencil, use the camera, use your learning to go out and find a way to get in good trouble, necessary trouble, to make our world a better world. . . . You have a moral obligation, you have a mission, you have a mandate to get out and disturb the order of things.
Close double quoteClose double quote
John Lewis
Civil-rights legend, author and U.S. Congressman, 2014.
Open double quoteOpen double quote
What art does—maybe what it does most completely—is tell us, make us feel that what we think we know, we don’t. There are whole worlds around us that we’ve never glimpsed.
Close double quoteClose double quote
Greil Marcus
Journalist and cultural critic, 2013.
Open double quoteOpen double quote
The reason I’m an artist is that it’s one of the few things that you can do in this world in which you are totally free. . . . Absolutely no one tells you what you can do and what you can’t do.
Close double quoteClose double quote
Laurie Anderson
Artist and musician, 2012.

Congratulations to the class of 2025!


Watch the 2025 SVA commencement exercises on Thursday, May 15, 1:00pm ET, at sva.edu/commencement or facebook.com/SchoolOfVisualArts.