Remembering Rina Kundu Little

We are remembering Rina Kundu Little, extraordinary colleague, educator, and scholar. Rina was pivotal to the development of Lynden’s Innovative Educators Institute and served as lead faculty beginning in 2016. Her background in museum education, prior to becoming a much-loved professor of art education, made her a perfect fit for Lynden. Her command of art historical resources, and particularly her knowledge of contemporary artists of color, resonated with Lynden’s Call & Response and HOME initiatives—which serve African American and refugee/displaced artists—and with the K-12 educators we serve through the IEI, most of whom teach in classrooms full of Black and Brown faces.

Rina was committed to training and supporting creative and engaged educators whose teaching was grounded in artistic practice and knowledge. For many of the teachers who participated in the IEI—some of whom had worked with Rina since they were undergraduates—the first response to this news has been “Rina was such an important part of my life.” Ashley Petry elaborated: “Much of who I am today as an educator, I owe to Rina. Over the past decade, she inspired me and guided me to become more resilient and confident—to imagine more authentic and meaningful ways of sharing art and community with students.”

The master artists who participated in the IEI, drawn from Call & Response and HOME, appreciated Rina’s adroit questioning during the gallery interviews she conducted. Fellow IEI faculty Candance Doerr-Stevens described this as getting artists “to open up and play with the ideas in their artwork.” So many of the artists told me afterward that they had gained new insight into their work—a true gift. Rina also wrote about their work in scholarly publications, bringing national attention to both the artists and Lynden’s work in the field of art education.

As Lynden’s Anna Grosch has written, “Rina loved working at the Lynden, and we loved working with her. She had an enormous impact on our philosophies, educational strategies, and how we approach certain things at Lynden.” Her delightful wheezy laugh was a regular feature of our weekly IEI planning meetings. We looked to her for the yearly themes that structured our summer lab and its two subsequent reconvenings, and we relied on her for the evocative language that described each year’s investigations. Rina was a natural synthesizer: armed with her idea, she was able to make connections between artmaking and curriculum sessions each day, and to cogently summarize a week’s progress. The IEI often feels like an island outside of time, a community of practice intent on itself, but Rina never took her eye off the world around that charmed space, drawing us back to the responsibilities and true implications of our work.

For me, Rina was an intellectual partner and someone who constantly challenged me to understand more about art education and its broader cultural importance. We had many conversations about the challenges of running an arts organization like Lynden. As a laboratory where ideas matter, where artists are supported, and where the creativity of teachers (as well as students) is encouraged; as a place where the relationships between art, nature, and culture are constantly reassessed; and as a funding-dependent institution operating in a changing political climate, Lynden is full of the entanglements (a favorite Rina word) that so attracted both of us. Her encouragement helped me make the difficult choices and to maintain our commitment to innovation in service to a better world. I agree with fellow IEI faculty Liz Rex: “Her talents and friendship are irreplaceable.”

This past June, Rina was absent, for the first time in a decade, from the summer lab—yet she felt so present to all of us. She passed away peacefully in her sleep at her home in Silver Spring, Maryland, on Wednesday, July 29, 2026, at the age of 60. Our thoughts are with her husband, Jon Little, who so often accompanied Rina to Lynden, and to her family: her sister, brother, stepchildren and grandchildren. You may read the full obituary here, where you will also find a link to the funeral service, which took place on August 9.

To honor Rina, and to keep her memory alive, Lynden has established the Rina Kundu Little Innovative Educator Scholarship for a K-12 teacher participating in the Innovative Educators Institute. Donations can be made to the Lynden Sculpture Garden, 2145 W. Brown Deer Rd., Milwaukee, WI 53217 or online at https://form.jotform.com/240786200151144 .

In sadness,

Polly