2024 Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf Visionary Award: Elizabeth Whelan 91 TX
For her outstanding achievements, commitment to continued exploration and inspired approach to her work, the RISD Alumni Association names Elizabeth Whelan 91 TX the 2024 recipient of the Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf Visionary Award.
Elizabeth Whelan, founder and principal of Elizabeth Whelan Design, is an acclaimed designer and leader in the field of woven fabrics. Known for her emphasis on experimentation and her commitment to weighing performance, aesthetics and function equally, Whelan has partnered with clients across multiple industries and won numerous national and international awards for her innovative work. Her textiles are currently produced on four continents and sold globally, and her work is in the permanent collection of the Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum.
Whelan’s process, which begins with curiosity—asking how she can refine and improve a product through textile design and creation—exemplifies the RISD ethos and yields highly functional and aesthetically beautiful textiles. She established her studio in 1997 after working in the textile industry for six years. In 1999 she began a fourteen-year collaboration with industrial designer Niels Diffrient through which she developed fabrics for his ergonomic chairs for the design and manufacturing company Humanscale. That collaboration disrupted the office chair industry and launched Humanscale as a leader in ergonomic seating.
Whelan is the winner of many awards, grants and fellowships as well as a patent-holder. In 2022, she was awarded a utility patent for Artemis, a two-plane fabric whose unique dimensional quality enables breathability and thermoregulation. She has created fabrics that can communicate via embedded LEDs, fabrics for Nike that respond to shifting light conditions to protect athletes outdoors, and highly durable and lightweight fabrics for Tumi Luggage.
After winning the Cynthia Hazen Polsky and Leon Polsky Rome Prize in Design, Whelan researched Renaissance silk velvets while in residence at the American Academy in Rome in 2023-2024, and is now working on a line of contemporary textiles inspired by that work. She has taught at RISD, the Parsons School of Design and the National Institute of Technology in New Delhi, India. She has lectured at M.I.T. and been a guest critic at the Pratt Institute.
About the Helen Adelia Rowe Metcalf Visionary Award
This award is the highest award by the RISD Alumni Association and honors Helen Metcalf, the founder of RISD, her visionary spirit, and civic generosity. The award recognizes alumni who have achieved outstanding distinction in their life’s work in a professional field, or in community, public or humanitarian service.
