2025 College of Fine Arts Hall of Fame Recipients
The College of Fine Arts is set to host the Celebration of Excellence event on Friday, Sept. 26, 2025, to honor these outstanding alumni, educators and friends of the Fine Arts.
Visit the event registration page to register for the Celebration of Excellence and Reception.
Learn more about the meaning behind the Hall of Fame and awards.
XU Bing
Xu Bing received his MFA in printmaking in 1995. Hi work has been featured at iconic museums, including the Museum of Modern Art, New York; the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York; the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum, New York; the Arthur M. Sackler Gallery, Washington, D.C.; the British Museum, London; the Victoria and Albert Museum, London; Museo Nacional Centro de Arte Reina Sofía, Spain; the Joan Miró Foundation, Spain; the Museum of Contemporary Art Australia, Sydney; the National Gallery of Canada, Ottawa; and the National Gallery of Prague, Czech Republic.
Over the years, Xu Bing's work has appeared in major art history textbooks, such as Art Past, Art Present by David Wilkins (Pearson Prentice Hall, 1997) and Gardner's Art Through the Ages: A Global History by Fred S. Kleiner (Wadsworth Publishing).
Xu Bing has received several esteemed awards throughout his career, including the MacArthur Fellowship, the 14th Fukuoka Asian Cultural Prize in Japan, the Artes Mundi Prize in Wales and a lifetime achievement award from the Southern Graphics Council. Columbia University awarded him an honorary Doctorate of Humane Letters. In 2015, he received the 2014 Department of State Medal of Arts for his efforts to promote cultural understanding through his work. That April, he was appointed an A.D. White Professor-at-Large by Cornell University.
Roger Broer
Roger Broer, an enrolled member of the Oglala Lakota Nation, lives and works in Hill City, South Dakota. He is known throughout South Dakota and beyond for his unique expressive paintings and monotype prints. Over the course of his career, Broer has exhibited in more than 300 solo and group exhibitions and has received more than 50 awards. He is recognized as one of the founding figures of American Indian art in South Dakota and was a founder of the Dream Catchers Guild of native artists. He was most recently awarded the 2025 South Dakota Governor's Award in the Arts for Outstanding Creative Achievement.
Broer has consistently taught workshops for the University of South Dakota's Oscar Howe Summer Art Institute and has been an integral part of the program. He has inspired many students to attend USD, earn undergraduate and graduate degrees, and pursue careers in art. Broer has also supported the emergence of new art markets in South Dakota, including Native POP and the Northern Plains Indians Art Market, where he continues to recruit and mentor the next generation of South Dakota artists and leaders.
Mary Crandell
Mary Crandell has 26 years of experience in instrumental music education, including 19 years at Waukee Middle School, where her bands achieved notable success in concert and jazz settings across Iowa. She holds both a bachelor's and master's degree in music education from the University of South Dakota and is completing doctoral work in curriculum and instruction, with an emphasis in music education, at Boise State University, where she also serves as an adjunct music professor. Her research explores students' perceptions of inclusion and belonging in large group band rehearsals, focusing on how diverse pedagogical practices shape these experiences.
Crandell is the founder of The Access Collective (TAC): Creating Connections Through Music, a national initiative launched in 2021 and partnered with the National Band Association and Music for All, Inc. TAC supports music educators and students by fostering collaboration, aligning essential skills with repertoire and creating student-centered rehearsal experiences through meaningful musical connection.
As a consultant and clinician, Crandell maintains an active national schedule. She co-authored Building from the Ground Up: A Successful Blueprint for Band Programs (C.L.Barnhouse Co.), a resource grounded in collaboration and evidence-based strategies to enhance music instruction, student engagement and performance. She has presented sessions on concert and jazz rehearsal pedagogy at local, state and national conferences, including the 2021 and 2024 International Midwest Band and Orchestra Conference. She has also served as president of both the Jazz Educators of Iowa and the Iowa Bandmasters Association.
Crandell's commitment to inspiring creativity in young learners is reflected in her two published children's books: Little Miss Mary Discovers Music Outside Her Window (ISBN: 9781499022179) and Little Miss Mary Discovers the Piano (ISBN: 9781503580008).
Virginia Harrington
Virginia Harrington attended the University of South Dakota as an English major before transferring to the University of Colorado Boulder, where she earned a bachelor's degree in English. She became close friends with Dr. Wayne Knutson, whom she considered a mentor. Harrington first met Dr. Knutson when she attended a National Science Foundation Institute for High School Juniors held on the USD campus. The humanities section of the curriculum was taught by Dr. Knutson, and her experience that summer inspired her to major in English and develop a deep appreciation for the arts.
Harrington has been a tenacious businesswoman, building a successful consulting business in Southern California. She later returned to South Dakota to care for her family and has since become an outstanding patron of the arts, supporting the National Music Museum, USD Theatre and USD Music.
She has emerged as a leading voice in the USD Opera Guild and played a significant role in the university's ability to commission and produce an original opera in spring 2024—a production that has since received national attention. Harrington's support for the fine arts has made a lasting impact on the success of USD's arts programs.
Lloyd Menard
Lloyd Menard, professor emeritus, retired after 33 years at the University of South Dakota in Vermillion, where he taught printmaking, papermaking and drawing. He has given more than 70 workshops in printmaking and handmade paper throughout the United States and Europe.
Menard founded Frogman's Print Workshops in 1981 and Frogman's Press & Gallery in 1994. The gallery specialized in exhibiting the work of nationally and internationally known print educators. He curated more than 70 exhibitions during the gallery's run.
Menard has collaborated with more than 200 artists to create editions and prints at both Frogman's Press & Gallery and the University of South Dakota. His work has been shown in more than 350 juried and invitational exhibitions and is part of more than 450 university, college, corporate and museum collections.
He received his Master of Fine Arts from the University of Illinois and his Bachelor of Fine Arts from the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
Menard has been honored with the Mid-American Print Council's Outstanding Printmaker Award; the Southern Graphics Council's Excellence in Teaching Printmaking Award; the College ARt Association's Distinguished Teaching of Art Award; the Burlington Northern Foundation's Faculty Achievement Award; the South Dakotan Governor's Award for Excellence in Arts Education and the University of Nebraska at Omaha's Alumnus of the Year Award.
Craig Volk
Craig Volk was born and raised in Mitchell, South Dakota. He received a Bachelor of Science and a Master of Arts (theatre/English double major) from the University of South Dakota, and a Master of Fine Arts in playwriting and screenwriting from the Yale School of Drama, where he twice won the Molly Kazan Award for best play.
As an educator in the South Dakota Arts Council's Writer-in-the-Schools Program, he conducted a six-year poetry workshop at the South Dakota State Penitentiary. That work resulted in two anthologies and four individual volumes of poetry published by his students. During the 1990s, he returned frequently to conduct workshops for the South Dakota Department of Education. This included the creation, with select high school students, of a readers theatre script titled At Risk that focused on teen social issues. The script was distributed and later performed at numerous locations across the state.
Another project resulted in the film Porch Light, which he wrote and co-produced. Centering on the AIDS crisis, the film aired on PBS stations and served as a centerpiece at a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention national conference in Atlanta.
Volk has held academic posts at the University of South Dakota, the University of California, Davis, and UCLA Extension. He was a tenured professor for more than 20 years in the University of Colorado Denver's film and television program, where he developed the overall curriculum.
His stage dramas have been selected three times for the Eugene O'Neill National Playwrights Conference and produced at venues including Yale Repertory Theatre, Actors Theatre of Louisville, and the Kennedy and Lincoln Centers. He was the first American playwright chosen for the National Russian Conference in Schelykova. His play, Mayakovsky Take the Stage, won the 2007 PEN USA Award for best drama.
Volk spent 12 years working in the television and film industry, including a staff position on the Emmy-winning series Northern Exposure. His writing credits include 11 screenplays and 25 aired television episodes. He has directed and executive produced several short documentaries that have appeared in film festivals across the country.
A published poet with four collections, he is also the author of the historical bio-drama A Dustbowl Books of Days, 1932 and the biography Dick Termes: Black Hills Artist and Visionary, both published by the South Dakota Historical Society Press. His most recent work is a memoir titled When the Stooges Played the Palace — 1961.
