Colin Blakely

A member of the RISD community since 2025, Associate Provost Colin Blakely provides leadership for academic and faculty affairs and oversees the Brown|RISD Dual Degree program.

Colin’s career encompasses more than 20 years combined higher education faculty and leadership experience, most recently as the vice president for strategic initiatives of Arizona Arts and director of the School of Art at the University of Arizona (U of A). In the latter role, he directly supervised 40-plus total faculty and staff for a school housing approximately 750 degree program majors. In the former, he oversaw and coordinated strategic planning within Arizona Arts. He also served on the strategic planning team for U of A as a whole, as well as the university’s three-year budget review committee. Additionally, he currently sits on the Board of the National Council of Arts Administrators (as past treasurer).

Colin has shown his photographic work at Fotofest Houston, the Society for Contemporary Photography, the Pingyao International Photography Festival, the Griffin Museum of Photography, the Photographic Center Northwest, and the Jen Bekman Gallery. He was a runner-up for the 2009 Aperture Portfolio Prize and a Winter 2007 Hot Shot. Publications include Pause to Begin, Photography Quarterly, and The Humble Collectors’ Guide to Emerging Art Photography. He received a BA from Williams College with a double major in math and studio art, and an MFA in photography from the University of New Mexico.