Victor Margolin

Victor Margolin (born 1941) is Professor Emeritus of Design History at the University of Illinois, Chicago

Victor Margolin grew up in Washington D.C. He studied English literature and film at Columbia University, where he graduated in 1963. While a student, he contributed to MAD magazine and edited the university humor magazine, the Columbia Jester, as well as two books of puns. After graduation, he studied film directing on a Fulbright Fellowship at the Institute of Higher Cinema Studies in Paris. Following his return to the United States, he worked briefly for the National Broadcasting Company in Washington D.C. and for the public television station, WETA. He moved to New York City in 1972, where he published his first two books on design history and design theory, American Poster Renaissance: The Great Age of Poster Design, 1890-1900 (1975) and the edited volume, Propaganda: The Art of Persuasion, WWII (1976).

In 1975, he moved to Chicago where he held several jobs in college and university administration before obtaining a PhD in design history from the Union Graduate School, a non-traditional institution based in Cincinnati. His dissertation was on the graphic design of Alexander Rodchenko, El Lissitzky, and László Moholy-Nagy. Margolin began teaching art and design history at the University of Illinois, Chicago in 1982 and remained there for his entire career, retiring in 2006.

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