Exploring New Beginnings Through Final Works at the GWU Corcoran School of the Arts & Design
Title: Culmination and Continuity: The Legacy of GWU Corcoran’s Exhibition Design Program
May signals a time of transition in North American higher education, marking the end of the academic year and celebrating students’ accomplishments. For the George Washington University’s Corcoran School of the Arts & Design, May 2024 marks a particularly poignant milestone with the graduation of the final cohort of the Master of Arts in Exhibition Design (MA–EX) program — the conclusion of a decade-long journey that has shaped many emerging exhibition designers.
A Program of Impact and Transformation
Since its inception, the MA–EX program has groomed students not only for careers in exhibit and experience design, but also for cultural stewardship in institutions and communities. Students hone their craft in spatial storytelling, curation, communication design, and public engagement. But more notably, they cultivate a mindset that embraces creativity, collaboration, and social consciousness.
The last decade saw the program’s students weather profound cultural and societal shifts — from the global shockwave of the COVID-19 pandemic to a period of transformation and reckoning within academia and the arts. While these conditions posed formidable challenges, they also catalyzed innovation and resilience in students, now visible in the real-world influence they wield.
An Exemplary Story: From Thesis to Transformation
The class of 2022 includes Andrew Kastner, an artist whose graduate research focused on redesigning didactic signage in public spaces to foster deeper, more intuitive engagements with the environment — removing text as a barrier and opening new approaches to inclusive communication. His case study: the Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens in Washington, DC, where he envisioned wayside signs as prompt-based sensory experiences, engaging visitors through visual cues and contextual awareness rather than traditional labels or narratives.
Kastner’s ambitions found fertile ground in Fourth Floor Design Collective, a studio founded by his classmates Natalie Adam and Alex Morpurgo. What began as a shared project during their time in the MA–EX program evolved into a professional partnership that now serves as a vessel for realizing Kastner’s groundbreaking concepts — combining data-driven design thinking with deep artistic conviction.
Persistence Through Adversity
In a dramatic turn of events, Kastner suffered a severe stroke in October 2022, shortly after completing his degree. The result was aphasia — a debilitating condition impacting verbal and written communication. But where some may have seen an end, Kastner found a new beginning.
Today, he is the 2024–25 Capital Fringe Down to Earth Artist in Residence at Kenilworth Aquatic Gardens, where his thesis proposal is coming to life in collaboration with Fourth Floor Design Collective and a network of fellow creative professionals, many of them alumni and faculty of the Corcoran School.
The residency centers on the development of an augmented reality (AR) app for park visitors. This app will create immersive digital experiences across nine key locations within the park, inviting users to engage with the environment without relying on language. Through design that emphasizes visual cues, motion, and user interaction, the team is making a bold leap into what Kastner calls “post-linguistic” audience engagement — a necessary innovation in an increasingly global and accessible experience design landscape.
A Collaborative Network in Action
The Kenilworth project stands as a compelling example of collaborative design. Fourth Floor Design Collective is leading the visual narrative and user experience design. Corey Howell, a GWU alumnus from the interaction design program, is spearheading 3D modeling and front-end design. Kevin Patton, interaction design faculty at Corcoran, is guiding both front- and back-end development of the AR app. Andrea Dietz, Kastner’s thesis advisor and a key advocate for the Exhibition Design program, continues to advise the team alongside other graduates from the program.
Together, this collective is not just reviving a thesis project but building a new mode of communication and design practice that highlights accessibility and multi-sensory storytelling. Their work emphasizes that exhibition design — and by extension, communication through public space — can be both inclusive and evocative even without words.
A Powerful Legacy
While 2024 may mark the final year of the MA–EX program at the Corcoran School, its spirit continues to radiate through the lives and work of its graduates. The program has not only trained designers but nurtured a generation of changemakers, whose work redefines the dynamics of cultural institutions, public engagement, and community-based creativity.
The collaboration between Kastner and Fourth Floor Design Collective embodies the enduring influence of the Corcoran School’s philosophy — that design is not just about objects or spaces, but about relationships, narratives, and the courage to start anew.
To learn more about the Corcoran School of the Arts & Design and the legacy of its programs, visit corcoran.gwu.edu.