Allison Wermager - Professor
Allison Wermager shares her creativity as an artist and a photographer based in New York City.
Exhibitions of her work were most recently held at the Stroom Den Haag Museum in the Netherlands in addition to the Museum at the Fashion Institute of Technology (FIT) and the Daniel Cooney Fine Art Gallery, both of New York. Allison Wermager’s artwork encompasses multiple forms of media, including sculpture, photography, sound, and video.
Born in Illinois, Allison Wermager grew up in rural Iowa. In 1999, she studied in Italy as part of Iowa State University’s Rome program through the institution’s College of Design. She received her Bachelor of Fine Arts from ISU the following year.
In 2002, Wermager began working as a Visiting Instructor at the Austin Museum of Art, a position she would hold for the next six years. She earned a Master’s degree with distinction from the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque in 2004 and an MFA from Cornell University two years later.
Her MFA thesis exhibition, held at the Tjaden Gallery, presented the “BEEEEP” installation project. In designing it, she collected old answering machines from thrift shops to create a unique audio-visual work. Observers could hear old messages playing as they examined the pile of dirty, discarded machines in a dimly lit area. The one-way, unresolved audio communications revealed common life situations—creating a feeling of familiarity among listeners.
In 2006, Allison Wermager accepted an Assistant Professor position in the Photography department at New York City’s Parsons The New School for Design. She also taught photography as an Adjunct Professor at FIT beginning the next year.
Today, Wermager fulfills responsibilities as a tenured Professor at FIT and continues to serve as part of the adjunct faculty at Parsons.