Dean J. Meeker was an internationally recognized printmaker and sculptor, and Professor Emeritus at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Meeker was born in Colorado on May 18, 1920. He attended Northwestern University part-time on the G.I. Bill and The School of the Art Institute of Chicago where he earned Bachelors and Masters degrees in Fine Art.

In 1946, Meeker began his teaching career at the University of Wisconsin- Madison, the first Art Department faculty member at the UW to have earned a Masters of Fine Art degree. Although Meeker’s developing interest at the Art Institute was sculpture, at the University of Wisconsin he soon began to draw upon past experience to pioneer expanding fields of artistic expression. One of the ways he supported himself in his late teens during the depression was by painting billboards for a sign company, and when he moved east to Chicago, he found similar work. It was here, at a Midwest signage shop, that he was exposed to silk-screen printing techniques.

With his infectious exuberance and creativity, Meeker transformed this once commercial process into evolving generations of increasingly complex expression. He found his motivating interest in art reflected in the Paul Klee quote “Art is Process” - that one discovers principles through exploration, rather than allowing known principles to limit the work.

In 1954, he received the first Graduate School Research Grant awarded to Studio Art Faculty. In 1957, he was invited to exhibit the first one-person serigraphy show at the Print Department of the Art Institute of Chicago, which was instrumental in breaking the “fine art” barrier for this medium. In 1959, while developing an innovative combination of serigraphy and intaglio printing, he was awarded the first Guggenheim Fellowship in the UW Art Department.

During his career, Meeker exhibited in 90 one-man shows, and was recognized as one of the outstanding printmakers in the country. During his tenure at the University of Wisconsin, the Department of Art’s graphics program ranked as “world class” and “number one in the nation” – due, in no small part, to Meeker’s contribution to the faculty.