Commencement Speaker: Julie Mehretu

Julie Mehretu is an artist for our times. After earning her MFA in Painting/Printmaking from RISD in 1997, she became widely known for large-scale abstract paintings, prints, and drawings. She received a prestigious MacArthur “Genius Grant” Fellowship in 2005. Her monumental piece Uprising of the Sun is featured on the facade of the soon-to-open Obama Presidential Center.

Deeply committed to social justice and cultural preservation, Mehretu made a contribution in 2024 to the Whitney Museum that makes it possible for those under the age of 25 to visit for free. It is for these accomplishments and many more that RISD is thrilled to award Mehretu with an honorary degree.

Born in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia in 1970, Julie Mehretu MFA 97 PR/PT creates paintings, drawings, and prints that articulate the contemporary social experience and explore palimpsests of history, from geological time to modern-day phenomenology. After earning her MFA in Painting and Printmaking from RISD, she moved to New York City, where she continues to live and work.

Mehretu has received many prestigious awards, including the MacArthur Award (2005) and the Ordre des Arts et des Lettres by the French Ministry of Culture (2025). Time Magazine named her one of the 100 most influential people in 2020, and she recently created Uprising of the Sun, an 85x25’ glass mural for the Obama Presidential Center in Chicago, IL.

Her work has been exhibited extensively in museums and biennials, including the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (2019); the High Museum, Atlanta (2020); the Whitney Museum of American Art, New York (2021); the Walker Art Center, Minneapolis (2021); the Palazzo Grassi Pinault Collection, Venice (2024); the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney (2024); K21 in Dusseldorf, Germany (2025); and MSN Warsaw (2026).