Award-winning illustrator, Anita Kunz, will receive an Honorary Degree from MassArt this year, and will speak at commencement.
Anita was greatly inspired by her uncle, who was an illustrator, and would influence her in making the decision to follow in his footsteps. He sadly died when she was 13, but she decided to go to art school, to follow her dream. She graduated Ontario College of Art in 1978. Since then Anita Kunz has lived in London, New York and Toronto, contributing to magazines and working for design firms, book publishers and advertising agencies internationally.

Anita’s portfolio has included producing cover art for many magazines including Rolling Stone, The New Yorker, Sports Illustrated, Time Magazine, Newsweek Magazine, the Atlantic Monthly and The New York Times Magazine. She has also illustrated more than fifty book jacket covers, and has shown her work at a number of galleries internationally.
In the fall of 2003 she was the first woman and the first Canadian to have a solo show at the Library of Congress in Washington DC. Later, in spring of 2007 Anita gave a short presentation about her New Yorker covers at the prestigious TED conference in Monterey California.

Anita has been named one of the fifty most influential women in Canada by the National Post newspaper.

In the past 10 years, Kunz has produced a body of work best described as personal work, which is now shown in galleries. She has recently received an honorary doctorate from the Ontario college of Art and Design in Toronto, and has been made an Officer of the Order of Canada, Canada’s highest civilian honor.

Anita has also received the Queen’s Diamond Jubilee Medal of Honour for her work.