Joseph H. Seipel

Joseph H. Seipel is an American sculptor and conceptual artist. He was Dean of the VCU School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University, ranked during his tenure as the number-one public university graduate arts program by U.S. News and World Report. He was a member of the VCU faculty for over 40 years, leaving briefly for several years to serve as Vice President of Academic Services at the Savannah College of Art and Design. As Dean of VCU arts, he also had oversight of the VCU School of the Arts branch in Doja, Qatar. He administered VCU exchange programs with art and design schools in Finland, India, Israel and Korea. He retired in 2016 to work on his own in-progress sculpture projects.

Seipel received his B.S. from the University of Wisconsin–Madison) in 1970, and his M.F.A. from the University of Maryland's Rinehart School of Sculpture in 1973. In an interview by Glenn Harper in Sculpture Magazine, before talking about sculpture and sculpture education, Seipel spoke about his own early education and how it affected his concept of the importance of scale and use of varied materials.

When Seipel became chair of the sculpture department at VCU in 1985, succeeding Dean Richard Toscan, the program had been strong for many years, with about 100 VCU-trained sculptors graduating each year. All BFA graduates of the Virginia Commonwealth University's School of the Arts--even though not necessarily sculpture majors--were required to have at least one rigorous class in the sculpture department. Seipel strove to transfer that multi-disciplinary success to the graduate program and to put additional focus on incorporating new technological equipment and training into the education of artists. "All of a sudden the sculpture students were using the same language as engineering students," Seipel said. Named Administrative Dean at the Savannah College of Art and Design in 2011, Seipel returned to Richmond as Dean of the School of the Arts at Virginia Commonwealth University's School of the Arts, a position from which he retired in 2016 and was followed by interim dean, Professor James Frazier.

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