ArtCenter Returns to the Spotlight With a Gala 16 Years in the Making

The long steel spine of ArtCenter College of Design seemed to glow from within Saturday night, its exposed grids stretching across the Arroyo like a bridge between eras. Designed by Craig Ellwood, the Hillside campus has always resisted decoration in favor of bare steel, poured concrete, and a view that dares students to think bigger. On this night, for the first time in sixteen years, it also played host to a gala.

Alumni, students, industry leaders, and patrons moved through the corridors and terraces, pausing to take in installations of alumni work—objects, images, systems—invoking history and future.

“ArtCenter is one of the most influential design institutions in the world,” said Jim Poore, a member of the school’s marketing team. “We probably touch the majority of cars out there today. We heavily influence entertainment, illustration, gaming, product design.” He smiled, almost apologetically. “We are somewhat a best-kept secret, this little gem up on the hill.” 

The gala, then, was partly a correction.

For Karen Hofmann, the college’s president, the night carried the weight of multiple anniversaries: the 50th year of the Ellwood building, the 25th anniversary of DesignMatters, and four decades of the ArtCenter100 support network. “This is one of the most significant nights that ArtCenter has had in its history,” Hofmann said, standing just inside the building’s vast interior corridor, where the San Gabriel Mountains frame every conversation. 

She spoke about momentum. “This is all about feeding the creative economy,” she said. “And this world needs us now more than ever.” 

The phrase—creative economy—floated through the evening , surfacing again in presentations about DesignMatters, the school’s social innovation arm, which has paired students with organizations ranging from UNICEF to Cedars-Sinai, tackling problems from public health to climate resilience. The implication was clear: design is no longer a finishing touch; it is infrastructure.

Still, the night belonged, in part, to memory.

Bob Gurr, the 94-year-old ArtCenter alumnus and original Disney Imagineer, arrived with the air of someone who had seen both the beginning and the long arc that followed. He had been present when the building opened. “The structure of this building was so… brilliant,” he said, pausing to admire the same industrial logic that once intimidated him. 

Gurr’s stories moved easily between past and present—between early encounters with automotive design legends and the improbable path that led him to spend nearly three decades building vehicles for The Walt Disney Company. What lingered most, though, was not the résumé but the feeling. “I couldn’t wait to get to class every morning,” he said. 

That sense of urgency—the idea that something important is always about to begin—remains the school’s quiet currency.

Throughout the evening, speakers returned to the idea that ArtCenter’s influence is often invisible until it isn’t: in the curve of a car, the interface of a phone, the choreography of a retail space. Alumni have gone on to shape companies like General Motors and Nokia, to design for global audiences, to win Oscars and build the systems through which culture moves.

And yet, as Hofmann noted, the institution is still, in some ways, catching up to its own impact.

Midway through the program, the tone shifted, gently but unmistakably, toward remembrance. The college honored longtime supporter Alyce de Roulet Williamson, whose decades of quiet advocacy and philanthropy helped sustain generations of students. Her presence, speakers noted, had long been felt less in ceremony than in continuity—in scholarships, in encouragement, in her steady belief that creative talent deserved a chance to find its footing.

A second tribute centered on Tim Kobe, the influential designer and former trustee whose work helped redefine how people experience brands and spaces. Through his firm, 8 Inc., Kobe played a central role in shaping the retail environments of Apple, with its iconic and influential Apple Stores. Colleagues described a designer who insisted that every decision begin with the human experience, and a mentor who returned often to ArtCenter to press that idea into the next generation. 

The most moving moment of the evening came not from a luminary but from a student. Jakub Zegzulka, the graduating valedictorian, described nearly leaving the school when his family could no longer support him—until scholarships intervened. Those funds, he said, allowed him to stay, to work at companies like Apple and OpenAI, and to imagine a future he had nearly abandoned. 

“You didn’t just keep one student here,” he told the audience. “You strengthened an entire design community.” 

Late in the evening, as guests drifted back out onto the terraces, the building returned to its usual composure—quiet, structural, unadorned. It has never needed spectacle. It only needed, perhaps, a reminder.

Sixteen years is a long time between galas. But then again, for a place that measures itself not in events but in influence, it may have felt like no time at all.