Marian-Ortolf Bagley (b. 1931)

Marian-Ortolf Bagley is professor emerita of design at the University of Minnesota, where she developed foundational courses in color design, design, and drawing.

Her love of art and fascination with color started as early as kindergarten, where she recalls painting nearly everyday.  At Wayne State University, she studied with influential water colorists Mary Jane Bigler and Louise Jansson Nobili.  Holding a Master of Arts in Teaching in Fine Arts and Art History from Indiana University, she is a practicing artist who has had many solo exhibitions of her watercolors and drawings, and has received numerous awards in juried exhibitions.

Her work is held by the Detroit Institute of Arts, Minneapolis Institute of Arts, Weisman Art Museum and Tweed Museum in Duluth, plus numerous public and private collections. She has completed commissions for the Goldstein Museum and the Minneapolis Art Institute. She was a guest professor at Humboldt Universität in Berlin and worked at libraries and archives in the United Kingdom and Europe.  Bagley is also the author of two books, one with Margaret Sathre Maxfield in 1986, titled “Afterimage Color Perception for Designers,” and the other with Barbara Caron in 2011, titled “Color in Design and Applied Art.”  This is an online book, available at : dha.design.umn.edu/research/coloranddesign.