Howard Fried is visiting faculty in the New Genres department. He attended Syracuse University from 1964 to 1967, Western Reserve University and Cleveland Art Institute in 1966, and received his BFA from SFAI in 1968. He received his MFA from UC Davis in 1970. That year he founded the New Genres Department at SFAI as he "wanted to recognize art that left no physical remnants". He was among the first conceptual artists in the Bay Area, including Terry Fox, Lynn Hershman, David Ireland, Paul Kos, Tom Marioni, and Bruce Nauman.

Fried's videos and performances have been featured in numerous exhibitions including the 1981 Whitney Biennial, Documenta 5 and others at the Whitney Museum of American Art in New York, the Museum of Modern Art, New York, the Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston, the University Art Museum in Berkeley, the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art and the Nova Scotia College of Art and Design. Fried received a Rockefeller Interdisciplinary Grant in 1986, a Western States Regional Media Arts Fellowship in 1986, a New Works Grant from the Massachusetts Council on the Art and Humanities in 1985, NEA Visual Arts Fellowhips in 1983, 1980 and 1974 and the Adaline Kent Award at SFAI in 1971.