Gans Named Weinstock Chair

Lucy Gans, professor and chair of the department of art, architecture and design, was recently named the first holder of the Louis and Jane Weinstock ’36 Chair of Art and Architecture at Lehigh University.

Gans teaches sculpture and drawing and is also an affiliated faculty member in the Women, Gender and Sexuality Studies program. In addition, she is an artist/teacher in the Vermont College MFA program. Her work is figurative, narrative and socially situated and ranges from individually carved figures to installations with drawings, prints and narrative text. Her exhibition, “In Our Own Words,” at Lehigh University’s Zoellner Arts Center, received a special award from the Bethlehem Fine Arts Commission for Social Impact. Her work is in many public and private collections in this country and abroad. She has been the recipient of the Medal of Honor from the National Association of Women Artists, the Peabody Award for her work in printmaking and the Clara Shainless Memorial Award.

Gans came to Lehigh as an assistant professor of the department of art and architecture in 1981 and was promoted to full professor in 1999. She chaired the department from 1987 to 1990, 2003 to 2004 and 2006 and then resumed in 2010. She directed the Women’s Studies program from 1991 to 1994 and the Design Arts program from 2008 to 2009.

She earned her BFA degree from Lake Erie College, Painesville, Ohio, and her MFA degree in sculpture with a minor in drawing from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, N.Y. She also studied painting and drawing at the Art Students League, New York, N.Y. She has taught in schools, colleges and universities in Ohio, New York, Alabama and Pennsylvania for more than 35 years.

“Lucy Gans exemplifies what we look for in an endowed chair holder: national profile, a devotion to students and a history of serving Lehigh and its constituents,” says Donald E. Hall, Herbert and Ann Siegel Dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. “The generous benefactors who fund our endowed positions are key to advancing the creative, pedagogical and intellectual work of this university.”

Louis “Luke” Weinstock and his wife, Jane, supported Lehigh for more than 60 years. Aside from 60-plus years of annual support to Lehigh, the Weinstocks established an endowed scholarship fund and an artist-in-residence endowment for the music department, funded the President’s House restoration and provided the leadership gift for the Jane and Louis Weinstock Center for Journalism at Coppee Hall. The most recent additions to their giving were the establishment of the Louis and Jane Weinstock ’36 Chair of Art and Architecture, the Louis and Jane P. Weinstock Zoellner Arts Center Endowment Fund and “Luke’s Gate,” the gate leading to the President’s House.