David Karwan is a graphic designer, educator, photographer, and writer who lives and works in Los Angeles. He is currently the Creative Director of Graphic Design at the Los Angeles County Museum of Art, where he has worked since 2012, and often part-time faculty at California State University, Los Angeles, where he has taught typography and senior projects.
His work was exhibited in Chris Hamamoto's 2023 Unrealized Archive 7, Jon Sueda’s 2014 All Possible Futures, and has appeared in the pages of Idea No.360 (Japan), Slanted Magazine #35 (Germany), and Inside out & Upside Down: Posters from CalArts 1980–2019, and he coauthored the essay “Agency and Urgency: The Medium and Its Message” with Lorraine Wild for the exhibition catalogue Hippie Modernism: The Struggle for Utopia, published by the Walker Art Center in 2016. He earned a BFA in Graphic Design from Western Michigan University (2005) and an MFA in Graphic Design from California Institute of the Arts (2012).
Say hi → davidkarwan@gmail.com
Instagram
Books
Imagined Fronts: The Great War and Global Media, 2023
(with Michael Price)
Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952–1982, 2023 ☘
(with Michael Price)
Objects of Desire: Photography and the Language of Advertising, 2022
City of Cinema: Paris 1850–1907, 2022 ☘
(with Katherine Go)
Light, Space, Surface: Art from Southern California, 2021
(with Katherine Go)
Betye Saar: Call And Response, 2019
(with Katherine Go)
Thomas Joshua Cooper: The World’s Edge, 2019
3D: Double Vision, 2018
Rowan Smith: Dead Centre, 2018
Playing with Fire: Paintings by Carlos Almaraz, 2017
(with Maja Blazejewska)
Polished to Perfection, 2017
Beyond Bling, 2016
Noah Purifoy: Junk Dada, 2015
(with Lorraine Wild)
Rowan Smith: No Everything, 2014
John Altoon, 2014
Play Active: a Curatorial Project in the Form of a Workshop, 2012
CalArts MFA MMXII, 2012
(with Scott Massey)
Exhibition Graphics (@ LACMA)
Painting in the River of Angels: Judy Baca and The Great Wall
Oct 26–Jul 21, 2024
Coded: Art Enters the Computer Age, 1952–1982
Feb 12–Jul 2, 2023
Objects of Desire: Photography and the Language of Advertising
Sep 4–Dec18, 2022
City of Cinema: Paris 1850–1907
Feb 20–Jul 10, 2022
(with Katherine Go)
Mixpantli: Contemporary Echoes
Dec 12, 2021–Jun 12, 2022
Mixpantli: Space, Time, and the Indigenous Origins of Mexico
Dec 12, 2021–Jun 12, 2022
Fiji: Art & Life in the Pacific
Dec 15, 2019–May 2, 2021
Thomas Joshua Cooper: The World’s Edge
Sep 22, 2019–Feb 2, 2020
Christian Marclay: Sound Stories
Aug 25–Nov 11, 2019
Power of Pattern: Central Asian Ikats
Feb 3–Aug 11, 2019
Rauschenberg: The 1/4 Mile
Oct 28, 2018–Jun 9, 2019
3D: Double Vision
Jul 15, 2018–Apr 1, 2019
John Gerrard: Solar Reserve
Jul 12–Sept 3, 2018
David Hockney: 82 Portraits and 1 Still-life
Apr 15–Jul 29, 2018
Playing with Fire: Paintings by Carlos Almaraz
Aug 6–Dec 3, 2017
Ed Fella: Free Work in Due Time
Jan 14–Oct 29, 2017
Moholy-Nagy: Future Present
Feb 12–Jun 18, 2017
Picasso and Rivera: Conversations Across Time
Dec 4, 2016–May 7, 2017
L.A. Exuberance: New Gifts by Artists
Oct 30, 2016–Apr 2, 2017
Diana Thater: The Sympathetic Imagination
Nov 22, 2015–Apr 17, 2016
New Objectivity: Modern German Art in the Weimar Republic, 1919–1933
Oct 4, 2015–Jan 18, 2016
Noah Purifoy: Junk Dada
Jun 7, 2015–Jan 3, 2016
50 for 50: Gifts on the Occasion of LACMA's Anniversary
Apr 26–Sep 13, 2015
Larry Sultan: Here and Home
Nov 9, 2014–Jul 19, 2015
Thomas Demand: Pacific Sun
Dec 13, 2014–Apr 12, 2015
Marsden Hartley: The German Paintings 1913–1915
Aug 3–Nov 30, 2014
Sam Durant: Proposal for White and Indian Dead Monument Transpositions, Washington, D.C.
Aug 3–Nov 30, 2014
Edward Biberman, Abbot Kinney and the Story of Venice
May 18–Nov 16, 2014
Kaz Oshiro: Chasing Ghosts
Jan 24–Jun 7, 2014
John Divola: As Far as I Could Get
Oct 6, 2013–Jul 6, 2014
Stephen Prina: As He Remembered It
Apr 7–Apr 4, 2013
Words
Cult Classic, Back to the End Times, 2022 ✎
Music as Methodology, Design as Dub, 2022 ✎
(Michael Worthington and David Karwan)
How to Read "Betye Saar: Call and Response," 2019 ✎
The 3 and the D, 2019 ✎
Ed-ucation & Ed-itorials, 2017 ✎
Colossal Characters: Oldenburg & Typography, 2017 ✎
Pure Typography, 2016 ✎
Agency and Urgency: The Medium and Its Message, 2015 ✎
(Lorraine Wild and David Karwan)
Networked Catalogue, 2015 ✎
Deborah Sussman’s Iconic Design, 2014 ✎
The Poet Designer, 2013 ✎
Credits
All installation photography © 2024 Museum Associates/LACMA