Commencement

Commencement 2025

Friday, May 16 at The Cabot

Montserrat College of Art held Commencement for the Class of 2025 on Friday, May 16, at 10 am at The Cabot, 286 Cabot St., Beverly.

The class was part of a procession of trustees, faculty, staff, and honored guests, led by bagpipers of Creagan More Pipes and Drums as they marched from the Hardie Building to the theater.

The keynote address was given by multi-disciplinary artist Paul Emmanuel, a Zambia-born artist who is currently a Fulbright Scholar and preparing for an exhibition of his work at the Smithsonian in Washington, DC.

The ceremony also included remarks by printmaking and sculpture faculty member and Fabrication Lab Studio Manager, Hannah Brooks, and student speaker Deon Agyeman, a member of the Games, Toys, and Play concentration. In addition, the event included remarks by President Brian Pellinen and Montserrat Board Chair Mercedes Sherrod Evans.

Several awards were given to members of the class and faculty during the event. Following the ceremony, guests were invited to a light reception on Beverly Common, adjacent to the Hardie Building, and the All-Senior Exhibition was on view in Montserrat Gallery.

Paul Emmanuel Bio:

Paul Emmanuel was born in Zambia and raised in Johannesburg, South Africa. Emmanuel graduated with a Bachelor’s degree in Fine Arts from the University of the Witwatersrand Johannesburg, South Africa, in 1994. Since then, his multidisciplinary work has focused on exploring the ways mental and physical landscapes interact in their construction of memories and identities.

In 2004, on the 10th anniversary of South Africa’s democracy, the first of his series of counter-memorials, The Lost Men, was temporarily installed at the 1820 Settlers National Monument, Makhanda (formerly known as Grahamstown), South Africa. In 2007, phase 2 of this project took place in Maputo, Mozambique, and in 2014, phase 3 was installed adjacent to the Thiepval Memorial to the Missing of the Somme, Northern France, as an official event of the First World War centenary.

Emmanuel’s multiple award-winning work has been exhibited at international venues, including the Apartheid Museum, Wits Art Museum, the Freedom Park Museum, the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, Boston University Art Galleries, the Sylt Foundation, the Rotterdam Film Festival, the Edinburgh International Film Festival, and the Dakar Biennale. He is represented in numerous South African private, corporate, and public collections as well as internationally in the Smithsonian National Museum of African Art, the U.S. Department of State, the Sylt Foundation, Germany, and the Fontmaure Art Culture Centre, France.

In 2020, his work was the subject of a monograph published by Wits Art Museum, South Africa, and since 2022, he has served as a Fulbright Scholar in the USA researching the country’s involvement in conflicts in the Greater Middle East Region as well as questioning the narratives of public spaces. In 2024, he graduated with a Master’s degree in Fine Arts from the Maryland Institute College of Art, Baltimore, USA, and is a recipient of the Gold Stern Mount Royal Emerging Artist Award. He is the Director of Civic Engagement for the Tour de Force Foundation, Washington, DC, and is a curriculum producer for the Medical College of Wisconsin’s discussion series Talking with Monuments: Veteran Dialogues on Remembering. This project is supported by the National Endowment for the Humanities program, Dialogues on the Experience of War.

Commencement Highlights

Speech Transcripts

Keynote Speaker Paul Emmanuel

Faculty Speaker Hannah Brooks

Student Speaker Deon Agyeman

President Speaker Brian Pellinen

Watch the speeches on our YouTube channel

LOCATION
The Cabot
286 Cabot Street
Beverly, MA.

CONTACT
[email protected]