Mili Thompson

Mili Thompson was born as Mildred E. Thompson in Dempseytown, Pennsylvania, on 16 August 1923. In 1945 she began studying at Chicago’s Institute of Design, the former New Bauhaus. Her teachers included the artist and designer Richard Filipowski as well as the graphic designer and illustrator Harold Walter. She also met the photographer Art Sinsabaugh there, her fellow student and future husband, who would go on to teach at the Institute of Design himself. In class, she created material studies for which she worked with different textures and shadows before photographing them. Thompson completed her degree in visual design in 1949. As an artist, she later worked in a variety of roles: She decorated display windows, was a graphic designer and the editor of an art magazine. In 2010 she was among former students who founded the Bauhaus Chicago Committee (later known as the Bauhaus Chicago Foundation), an institution that collects and preserves the activities as well as works of students at the school. Mili Thompson died in Chicago on 10 April 2015.