Three professors at Tyler are set to retire at the end of December 2023: Pauline Hurley-Kurtz, Dona Nelson, and Hester Stinnett. Among the three of them, these long-serving educators have taught for a combined 105 years at Tyler, educating thousands of students in landscape architecture, painting, and printmaking.
Associate Professor of Landscape Architecture Pauline Hurley-Kurtz began her career with Tyler as an instructor in 1990 before working her way up to chair of the Landscape Architecture program in 2015. In her career as a registered landscape architect, she has focused on designing and producing memorials and healing gardens; notably she served as the design landscape architect for the award-winning Irish Great Hunger Memorial in Old City Philadelphia. Hurley-Kurtz is also responsible for leading the design and installation of the Ernesta Ballard Healing Garden in the Ambler Arboretum of Temple University.
Professor of Painting Dona Nelson has worked at Tyler since 1991, starting as an assistant professor and eventually earning the professorship in painting in 2002. She has had an influential professional career as a visual artist, and is best known for her work with unorthodox materials, processes, and formats. Nelson has had 20 solo exhibitions of her work and was included in the Whitney Biennial in 2014. In 2021, Nelson received the College Art Association's prestigious Distinguished Teaching of Art Award for demonstrating the inseparability of teaching and artistic practice.
Professor of Printmaking Hester Stinnett has worked at Tyler for 40 years. In her creative practice, she utilizes the various tools and processes of printmaking as a means of drawing rather than just reproducing; process and concept go hand-in-hand. Stinnett’s work has been exhibited nationally and internationally and is collected in numerous private and public collections, including the National Gallery of Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, and the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis. She is also an alum of Tyler, receiving her MFA in Printmaking in 1982. Most recently, Stinnett opened a duo exhibition with fellow alum Ron Abram (MFA ’86) at the Museum of the University of Guanajuato in Mexico.