Get out your erasers and take a note. The University of Pennsylvania Graduate School of Fine Arts (GSFA) has changed its name to the School of Design of the University of Pennsylvania. 
In a press release that reads like the Green Bay Packers defensive line, Dean Gary Hack explains that the “name of the School has been a constant source of confusion, requiring an explanation more often than not.”
The school houses programs in architecture, city planning, fine arts, historic preservation and landscape architecture — and fine arts is the smallest. Also…one-third of the teaching is at the undergraduate level, according to the release.
What’s in a name anyway? Branding…and did I mention funding?
Meanwhile, check out the school’s website for the fall visiting artists lecture series, a mix of 25 practicing artists and critics coming in for slide lectures (all free and open to the public). The two I’ll hit are local cartoonist and Pew fellow Charles Burns on Oct. 27 [see image] and Village Voice art critic Jerry Saltz on Nov. 11. And I’m waiting to hear about the speakers for the next Locks Foundation Distinguished Artist event, since the innaugural in April — a jousting match between Alex Katz and curator and critic Robert Storr — was such fun.
