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Ellen Lupton is a graphic designer, writer, curator, and educator.

Lupton described the evolution of her own career like this:

"I studied design and art in the early 1980s at The Cooper Union in New York City. When I graduated, I was invited to run a small design gallery inside the school. I did that for seven years. I was a do-it-yourself curator, hanging my own shows, keeping the windows clean, trimming the labels. At the same time, I was publishing a lot, building a reputation as a writer and critic. In 1992, I was offered a ‘real job’ at Cooper-Hewitt, National Design Museum, also in New York City. Now, I had the opportunity to create much larger exhibitions for a bigger public. Each exhibition has been accompanied by a sturdy exhibition catalogue and ambitious public programming."

Her exhibitions have included: Mechanical Brides in 1993; Mixing Messages in 1996; Graphic Design in the Mechanical Age in 1999; Cooper-Hewitt National Design Triennial in 2000, 2003 and 2006; Skin: Surface, Substance + Design in 2002; Feeding Desire: Design and the Tools of the Table in 2006; and Solos: New Design from Israel in 2006.

Since 1997 Lupton has also been the director of the Master of Fine Art program in graphic design at Maryland Institute College of Art (MICA): "In 1997, I was invited to run the graphic design program at Maryland Institute College of Art, in Baltimore, a big, tough city that is two hours by train from New York. Baltimore is my hometown, and a fun place to live. Cooper-Hewitt has allowed me to live in Baltimore for the past ten years and continue as a part-time curator."

Lupton is married to J. Abbott Miller, a partner in the New York office of the international design firm Pentagram. Together Ellen and Abbott live in Baltimore and have two children, Jay and Ruby.

This author page uses material from the Wikipedia article "Ellen Lupton", which is released under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share-Alike License 3.0