Dear MCAD Community,
Please join me in welcoming Abbi Allan as Assistant Professor of Fine Arts. She will begin her new role on August 17, 2026.
Abbi Allan’s life work is about creating hybridizations between art & science.
Abbi is currently the Interim Director of MCAD's Teaching Artist Minor and a practicing artist with a biological focus in content. She has worked with all ages in the arts and sciences, having developed and taught courses at the Science Museum of Minnesota, the College of Visual Arts, STAR Academy, the Phipps, and more. She has specialized in designing and writing curriculum for decades that utilizes art to visualize scientific concepts. Abbi currently represents MCAD in the Association of Independent Colleges of Art and Design with the Arts and Wellbeing workgroup, along with members from Otis College of Art and Design, Pratt Institute, and Massachusetts College of Art and Design.
She attended the New York State College of Ceramics at Alfred University, where she majored in Mixed Media and minored in both Biology and Art History, and received her Master of Fine Arts in sculpture from the Minneapolis College of Art and Design. Abbi has run her own business since she was 17, starting with selling her ceramic sculptures and continues her studio practice in different media while constantly experimenting with new projects. Her work examines the fragility of nature: its beautiful resilience, power, and the potential for grotesque accumulated effects when abused. Currently she is exploring the complexities of caretaking careers in her visual art.
Abbi also loves her Dobermans, gardening, creating art, record collecting, and is enamored with all the strange things that happen in the natural world. She is also a programmer on KFAI with her own radio show, and volunteers for Extreme Noise Records - a volunteer-run co-op focused on the international reach of punk and DIY culture.
Thank you to all members of the search committee, including Howard Quednau, Professor and Chair of Fine Arts; John Gaunt, Professor of Fine Arts; and Gerald Ronning, Professor and Chair of Liberal Arts.
All of my best,
Melissa