The Passing of Jeanine Mellinger

Jeanine Mellinger (1953-2012)
Jeanine Mellinger, associate professor of the Interdisciplinary Arts Department, died on September 1, 2012, after a prolonged battle with cancer. Charles Castle, assistant dean of the School of Media Arts, sent the following report.

Mellinger was an associate professor of the Interdisciplinary Arts Department since 2006. She came to Columbia College Chicago in 1994 and was originally a tenured faculty member in the Television Department, where she played a key role in redesigning the curriculum.  She is the reason for many of the success's in this department. Among other things Jeanine partnered with AVID Editing to bring digital editing to our curriculum in the 1990s.  She played an instrumental role in bringing graduate students into the department as teaching assistants and without her the TV Department wouldn't have Motion Graphics courses they do today, those were her creation.

In 2001, Mellinger created the Interdisciplinary Arts and Media MFA while working only part-time in the department. She ran the MFA program, almost single-handedly, for four years, until the fall of 2006, when her position moved from Television to Interdisciplinary Arts.

Mellinger was actively engaged as a video artist for many years. Prior to 1994, she was the program director of the Center for New Television and taught at the Minneapolis College of Art and Design, the School of the Art Institute of Chicago, as well as at The Community TV Network. She held a BFA from the University of California, San Diego, and an MFA from the School of the Art Institute. 

Her connections in the realm of video art brought such distinguished artists as Bill Viola and Mary Lucier to Columbia. Her work has been exhibited at the Museum of Modern Art; The Kitchen; MIT; Anthology Film Archive; Image Union, WTTW; Museum of Contemporary Art, Chicago; Walker Art Center; Artists Space, New York; Kunst Video, Norway; Boston Film Video Foundation; Festival Des Files Des Vues, Quebec; Galleri 33, Norway; Women's Video Festival, Montreal; Video Biennale; World Wide Video Festival, Holland; and Women in the Director Chair.

Mellinger's awards include the Provost Humanities and Arts Grant and Faculty Development Grant from Columbia College Chicago, the AFI/NEA Regional Fellowship, and the Illinois Arts Council's Artist Fellowship. She has also received recognition from the Jerome Foundation for Film in the Cities, the Videowall Project, the Intermedia Arts/Dayton Foundation, the Neighborhood Arts Project, and the Chicago Council of Fine Art.

Memorial arrangements will be forthcoming.

We offer our sincere condolences to Mellinger's family, especially her partner of more than 30 years, John Manning. Her friends, colleagues, and students are still stunned by her death: Mellinger leaves behind a community of people who were richer from her presence and who are made poorer by her absence.