Monna Morton

Monna Morton stands on a porch with her hands folded in a red turtle neck sweater, earrings and a brooch.
Faculty

Monna Morton has taught at University of the Arts since 2016. As an adjunct professor, she teaches advertising and focuses on how various industries communicate with their audiences. These industries include consumer products, entertainment, and services: healthcare (both physical and mental), transportation, social causes and issues, and pharmaceuticals.

Biography

Monna Morton is from Philadelphia and was educated in the Philadelphia public school system. She earned her BFA from Pratt Institute, Brooklyn, New York, with a focus on graphic design, advertising, and art direction. Morton is a traditionally trained artist with a strong fine arts background. She maintains her studio practice and has exhibited in galleries and museums (including the Barnes Foundation) and has curated shows in Philadelphia and New York.

Most recently, she curated an exhibit in Philadelphia’s City Hall, How Art Heals. It was an exhibit that coincided with the one-year anniversary of the tragic fire in Philadelphia’s Fairmount section that took the lives of three adults and nine children. Morton currently has a permanent installation in the Colored Girls Museum, a house museum in the Germantown section of Philadelphia, which is considered a hidden gem by museum-goers and critics. Morton  researched and designed Window Conversations, for store windows in Northern Liberties depicting images and telling the story of the Black men and women who migrated to Philadelphia to escape enslavement and started businesses in that area. She was an Intercultural Leadership Institute year four fellow and traveled with her cohort, sharing cultural stories, art making, and creative space making in North Carolina and Hawaii.  

Experience

  • Graphic design and advertising 

  • Brand development and communications

  • Moore College of Art Continuing Education, Pre-press

Awards & Accolades

  • Morton has won more than 40 design awards for graphic design excellence, including

    • a Graphic Design USA award,

    • a Hermes Creative Award, 

    • a Neographics award,

    • a Package Design Award, and 

    • a Philadelphia Design Award.