Edward Bakst

Edward Bakst is an award-winning artist, designer, director, and educator whose work spans animation, photography, film, and experiential design. His imaginative concepts and short animated films have been created for organizations including MTV, Nickelodeon, Smithsonian, HBO, PBS, ABC, NBC, Showtime, FX, Sesame Workshop, UNICEF, and National Geographic, among many others, earning numerous international awards. His films have been screened at the SIGGRAPH Theatre, and he is a recipient of both a Guggenheim Fellowship and Jerome Foundation grants.

Bakst’s artwork and photography have been exhibited globally, with recent highlights including MADS Gallery exhibitions in Milan, Barcelona (La Pedrera, Gaudí Room), and the Canary Islands; international invitational exhibitions in Seoul, Sicily, Italy, and Qatar; projections on a digital Times Square billboard in New York City; and inclusion in the U.S. State Department’s Impact of Exchange traveling exhibition. His work has been widely featured in publications such as Global Art Times, Artventurous Magazine, Contemporary Art Curator, and Museum Mile Contemporary, and he was a Creative Quarterly CQ71 Award winner. Recent photography exhibitions include Center for Photography Woodstock, Arts Society Kingston, CICA Museum for Contemporary Art (Seoul), and ArtExpo New York. 2026 brings works exhibited at Hudson Valley MOCA and ArtExpo NY ‘26, followed by the solo show at ASK, NY in July.

In academia, Bakst has designed, directed, and launched pioneering programs at institutions including Pratt Institute, Columbia University, RMCAD (where he founded International Animation and ASIFA-CO), College for Creative Studies (as Full Professor), and Nanyang Technological University, where he helped shape the School of Art, Design & Media and the School of Technology for the Arts. He has held invited and endowed professorships at universities in Turkey, Japan, and China, and served as a Fulbright Specialist through 2024, conducting Imagination Workshops internationally, including at a women’s university in Pakistan. Across his creative and academic work, Bakst centers imagination as the catalyst for self-discovery, innovation, empowerment, and expressive possibility.