Michael Mercil, professor, Department of Art, has been named the interim chair for the department, effective Sept. 1, 2017 to May 31, 2018.

Mercil’s art and teaching explore realms of “the near, the low, the common” in works close to — if not always within — the categories of sculpture, drawing, painting, landscape architecture, film, performance and agriculture. In 2005, together with Ann Hamilton, Mercil founded “The Living Culture Initiative” – a project integrating contemporary art practices within the core research mission of Ohio State and reinvigorating the public land-grant college as an “agri/cultural commons.”

His artwork has received numerous regional and national awards, and has been exhibited in solo and group shows organized by museums and art centers throughout the United States. An occasional writer, Mercil has contributed to, among other publications, PLACES magazine, Public Art Review and TriQuarterly. His essay, co-authored with Ohio State Professor Amanda Gluibizzi, on Lucy Lippard’s, “Dematerialization of the Art Object …” is included as a chapter in the Cambridge History of Postmodern Literature, published in 2016.