“A hundred years ago, there was no chance of me as a woman, or me as a person of color, even going to UCLA. Now different people and different brains are getting educated. And that's going to be a positive impact for the world.”
Arami Walker (BA, ‘16) studied World Arts and Culture with a focus on performance arts and arts activism. She’s an independent musician and is set to release her debut album this year. Arami (rhymes with Jeremy) talked to UCLA about how her undergraduate experience prepared her for her career. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.
We're talking to you now in Seattle, where you live. What are you up to there?
I've been in Seattle for two years. I'm recording my first album that explores my relationship with humanity, nature and technology. I'll be releasing one song a month for the entirety of 2020. I'm working closely with the radio station KEXP to keep pushing my music forward. I've built a team organically of musicians and managers. I'm an independent artist, so it really does take a team, and it's slowly unfolding and I'm really happy with where I'm at in my career.
On the occasion of UCLA’s Centennial, UCLA Arts is proud to present 100 for 100—a collection of stories that celebrate the rich history of the arts at UCLA over the past century. Each monthly newsletter throughout the yearlong celebration will feature a new story by a member of our community that reflects on our past and imagines what’s possible for our future. We invite our community to explore these stories and contribute their own to the collection. This month's contribution comes from Marla C. Berns, Shirley & Ralph Shapiro Director of the Fowler Museum at UCLA.
Chancellor Franklin D. Murphy presided over UCLA during one of the most tumultuous decades of its history and that of the world at large—the 1960s. While addressing its reverberations—especially the new liberal consciousness rooted in the Civil Rights and antiwar movements that shook the foundations of many university campuses—Murphy made an indelible mark on UCLA’s and Los Angeles’s cultural landscape. He established what is now called the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden (1967), helped create the new Los Angeles Music Center (1964) and the Los Angeles County Museum of Art (1965), and founded a new campus museum, originally called the Laboratory of Ethnic Arts and Technology (1963). The museum’s creation and focus on the arts and material cultures of Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and the indigenous Americas were tied to Murphy’s vision of an internationally-oriented, interdisciplinary institution responsive to national liberation movements around the world. It coincided with new centers of study at UCLA—Latin American, Near Eastern, European, and African—as well as Ethnic Studies Centers reflecting Los Angeles’ growing diversification. The remarkable legacy of Murphy’s brief tenure (1960-68) is memorialized in the naming of UCLA’s administrative hub, Murphy Hall, and the art-filled garden sanctuary on north campus. Less well known is his imprint on the 57-year history of the Fowler Museum at UCLA.
On the occasion of UCLA’s Centennial, UCLA Arts is proud to present 100 for 100—a collection of stories that celebrate the rich history of the arts at UCLA over the past century. Each monthly newsletter throughout the yearlong celebration will feature a new story by a member of our community that reflects on our past and imagines what’s possible for our future. We invite our community to explore these stories and contribute their own to the collection.
This month’s contribution is by Jessa Calderon, a Tongva and Chumash mother, healer, and internationally-renowned artist, and Tria Blu Wakpa, assistant professor, UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance with an affiliation in American Indian Studies.
On the occasion of UCLA’s Centennial, UCLA Arts is proud to present 100 for 100—a collection of stories that celebrate the rich history of the arts at UCLA over the past century. Each monthly newsletter throughout the yearlong celebration will feature a new story by a member of our community that reflects on our past and imagines what’s possible for our future. We invite our community to explore these stories and contribute their own to the collection.
Designed by the Los Angeles-based architecture firm Johnston Marklee, the award-winning UCLA Margo Leavin Graduate Art Studios is a world-class facility dedicated to supporting emerging artists and strengthening Los Angeles’s position as a world arts capital. As UCLA celebrates its Centennial, this project reinforces the department’s standing as one of the leading educational art institutions in the world. The new building underscores the university’s continued commitment to nurturing generations of artistic talent while simultaneously enriching Los Angeles’s vibrant cultural community. It also signals a deepening of support for the renowned artists whose dedication to teaching future generations has been a hallmark of the West Coast arts community for the past century.
Lindsay Erickson ’10 (UCLA Architecture and Urban Design) is a senior associate at Johnston Marklee and served as project lead for the UCLA Margo Leavin Graduate Art Studios. On the occasion of the first public opening for the building, Lindsay shares a few insider details about the project.
On the occasion of UCLA’s Centennial, UCLA Arts is proud to launch 100 for 100—a collection of stories that celebrate the rich history of the arts at UCLA over the past century. Each monthly newsletter throughout the yearlong celebration will feature a new story that reflects on our past and imagines what’s possible for our future. We invite our community to explore these stories and contribute their own to the collection.
This month's contribution is by Dr. Dana Cuff, director, UCLA cityLAB & professor, UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design
When I arrived at UCLA to join the faculty of Architecture and Urban Design in 1993, architecture was in an extraordinary place vis-à-vis culture at large. The Guggenheim in Bilbao was underway, and would open four years later with a New York Times Magazine cover that announced Frank Gehry had produced “A Miracle in Bilbao.” Then Dean Richard Weinstein joined the profession’s swoon over the power of architecture and the attention from the glitterati. It was a work of groundbreaking, creative genius that was credited with regional economic development in the rusted industrial Basque Country. The ties of architecture to the city, with its economic, social, and political complexities, were not lost on Weinstein, an architecture-trained urban designer who cut his teeth in Mayor John Lindsay’s Manhattan. Meanwhile, the fresh terrain of digital technologies overtook the academy in 1994 with the advent of the paperless studio at Columbia, soon embraced at UCLA. Simultaneous with my arrival, the Graduate School of Architecture and Urban Planning broke apart, the departments administratively divorcing in 1994. With the split, UCLA abandoned the theory that architecture should be united with planning to create an integrative architecture of the city. Instead, it was the Guggenheim-as-monument that gave architecture its grandest public stage, and there was a strong sense that individuals—particularly older white men—would be performing the miracles. As for me, I was stealthily nursing my second child between interviews with the faculty I hoped would hire me.
On the occasion of UCLA’s Centennial, UCLA Arts is proud to present 100 for 100—a collection of stories that celebrate the rich history of the arts at UCLA over the past century. Each monthly newsletter throughout the yearlong celebration will feature a new story that reflects on our past and imagines what’s possible for our future. We invite our community to explore these stories and contribute their own to the collection.
This month's contribution is by Victoria Marks, UCLA Professor Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, Associate Dean, School of the Arts and Architecture
Dancing is often looked upon as a kind of aesthetic athleticism: beautiful bodies doing amazing things; a taste of the sublime. Whereas in the Renaissance when sculpted perfection was the composite of the best features of all the human subjects accessible to the artist, today’s dancers, like our athletes, are—in themselves—the closest we will come to perfection. Michelangelo’s David never was a real person. He, (like Barbie) was the sculptor’s imagined ideal. Today we mostly look for beauty and remarkability amongst the real, living, dancers, models, athletes, actors, etc. that populate stages, film, and photography. There is something affirming about viewing the best humanity has to offer. There is also something troubling. Actually, a few things are troubling.
5 things to see and do in Los Angeles handpicked by Georgina Huljich
Georgina Huljich is an adjunct assistant professor in the UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design and an alumni of the M.Arch.I program, having graduated with distinction in 2003. She has been a Visiting Professor at Yale, UPenn; UC Berkeley, TIT in Tokyo and Di Tella University in Buenos Aires. Georgina has been a member of the Board for CAP UCLA since 2015 and has served on National Juries for the Rome Prize and AIA Awards. She is the recipient of many awards, the most notable being the prestigious US Artists Fellowship in 2013; an endowment that recognizes America’s most accomplished and innovative artists. Georgina is Director of P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S, together with Marcelo Spina. P-A-T-T-E-R-N-S has gained international recognition as one of the most intriguing and progressive firms working in architecture today, with completed projects in the U.S., South America and Asia. Their work has been exhibited worldwide, most notably at the Venice Biennale in Italy, The Chicago Biennial, the Art Institute of Chicago, The San Francisco MOMA, The Vienna MAK Museum, where it is also part of the permanent collections. Huljich has previously worked for the Guggenheim Museum, the architectural firm Dean/Wolf architects in New York, and as a project designer at Morphosis in Los Angeles. She was the 2005–06 Maybeck Fellow at UC Berkeley.
Read more…
On the occasion of UCLA’s Centennial, UCLA Arts is proud to present 100 for 100—a collection of stories that celebrate the rich history of the arts at UCLA over the past century. Each monthly newsletter throughout the yearlong celebration will feature a new story that reflects on our past and imagines what’s possible for our future. We invite our community to explore these stories and contribute their own to the collection.
This month's contribution is by Professor Allen Roberts, UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance
July 23rd, 2019, marked the sixteenth Sheikh Amadu Bamba Day, as recognized by a proclamation of the Los Angeles City Council on behalf of the Senegalese community of Southern California. Amadu Bamba (1853-1927) was a Sufi saint whose life lessons of generosity through hard work inspire many Senegalese Muslims.
UCLA Artists in the Hammer Museum Collections, 1919–Today
Cynthia Burlingham, director, Grunwald Center for the Graphic Arts
Today, the UCLA Department of Art is one of the most respected in the field, with a stellar faculty roster and a distinguished track record among its many graduates. Its pre-eminence is, at least in part, the product of over 100 years of history. Since its beginnings in 1919, the Department of Art has remained as a model of pedagogy and practice for art departments and schools around the country.
The collections of the Hammer Museum bear witness to this remarkable history. Thanks to numerous acquisitions and bequests, including several major gifts by former faculty including Dorothy Brown, Robert Heinecken, and Jim Welling, the museum’s collections evolved in parallel with the Department of Art. The works in the Hammer Contemporary Collection and the UCLA Grunwald Center Collection now offer a privileged glimpse into the Department of Art’s most influential legacies.
An Imaginative Offer celebrates the essential role of the arts in society. This ongoing initiative—a series of short films crafted from the unique voices of the UCLA Arts community—demonstrates our conviction that the arts are fundamental to the cognitive, critical, inquisitive life of a public research university. We believe that the practice and presence of the arts form the cornerstone of the creative, innovative thinking, and collaborative spirit that the 21st century demands.
An Imaginative Offer, the series’ titular film, celebrates the transformative power of the arts in society and the unique role that the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture plays as a forward-looking, interdisciplinary nexus for creativity and scholarship.
The story of the arts at UCLA is inextricably linked to the story of the arts in Los Angeles. The longstanding tradition of the teaching artist that defines the west coast art scene means that UCLA has served as a touchstone for the city’s vibrant cultural ecosystem since the beginning.
1919 – The Southern Branch of the University of California, later UCLA, is founded.
1919 – Barbara Morgan, who becomes Martha Graham's primary photographer, joins UCLA's first graduating class.
1920 – 80% of the world’s films are shot in California.
1922 – First concerts held at the Hollywood Bowl amphitheater.
1923 – Walt Disney arrives in Los Angeles with $40 in his pocket.
1924 – Los Angeles population tops one million.
1927 – The Academy of Motion Picture Arts & Sciences is established.
1928 – Los Angeles City Hall opens.
1928 – John Philip Sousa conducts the UCLA Marching Band on his final visit to Los Angeles.
1929 – Westwood campus opens with 5,544 students and four permanent buildings, including Royce Hall.
1930 – The Department of Art hosts Contemporary Creative Architecture of California, an exhibition & symposium featuring Frank Lloyd Wright, Richard J. Neutra, and R.M. Schindler.
In 1993, the UCLA Museum of Cultural History was formally renamed the Fowler Museum, joined the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, and opened a new facility on campus; made possible through the generous support of both private gifts & state resources. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
“Growing up I was always intellectually curious, but also hardheaded. I was always questioning things when what I was being taught in school didn’t match my reality. At UCLA, that questioning has been welcomed, and my experiences have been welcomed.” Oscar Magallanes, B.A., 2017, Department of Art Read more…
An Imaginative Offer celebrates the essential role of the arts in society. This ongoing initiative—a series of short films crafted from the unique voices of the UCLA Arts community—demonstrates our conviction that the arts are fundamental to the cognitive, critical, inquisitive life of a public research university. We believe that the practice and presence of the arts form the cornerstone of the creative, innovative thinking, and collaborative spirit that the 21st century demands.
Leaning Forward spotlights the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture’s internationally acclaimed public arts institutions: UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance, the Fowler Museum, and the Hammer Museum. Collectively, these venues create a vibrant cultural commons for the research university, Los Angeles, and the world.
UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance Distinguished Professor Peter Sellars is an opera, festival, and theater director who has gained renown worldwide for his groundbreaking and transformative interpretations of artistic masterpieces and collaborative projects with an extraordinary range of creative artists across three decades. Known for exploring challenging moral issues such as race, war, poverty, and the international refugee crisis through his work, he is the recipient of many prestigious awards including the MacArthur Fellowship, the Erasmus Prize for contributions to European culture, the Gish Prize, and is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Sellars shares five things to see and do in Los Angeles. Originally published fall 2018. Read more…
"Art making develops a type of curiosity that, I think, makes it a radical practice. It is within that practice that we’re able to break open fixed narratives and structures and ask why anything has to be the way it is." –taisha paggett, M.F.A. ’08, World Arts and Cultures/Dance. Read more…
Artist and Professor Catherine Opie is featured in this extended content from An Imaginative Offer, a series that celebrates the essential role of the arts in society. This ongoing initiative—a series of short films crafted from the unique voices of the UCLA Arts community—demonstrates our conviction that the arts are fundamental to the cognitive, critical, inquisitive life of a public research university. We believe that the practice and presence of the arts form the cornerstone of the creative, innovative thinking, and collaborative spirit that the 21st century demands.
“Go crazy…don't be afraid to explore, especially in architecture and art. That's what you should do. That’s where the genius comes from – breaking the rules and bending the boundaries.” – Katie Chuh, M.Arch I, Architecture and Urban Design Read more…
Department of Art Assistant Professor Rodrigo Valenzuela is a Los Angeles-based artist working in photography, video, painting, and installation. Using autobiographical threads to inform larger universal fields of experience, his work constructs narratives, scenes, and stories that point to the tensions found between the individual and communities. Much of Valenzuela’s work deals with the experience of undocumented immigrants and laborers. Valenzuela shares five things to see and do in Los Angeles. Originally published winter 2019. Read more…
In 1919, The University of California established its southern branch in Los Angeles. From its earliest days, UCLA has offered academic programs in art and music and has always housed an art gallery. Pictured here is the fine arts building on the original Vermont Avenue campus.
Dean Brett Steele on the role of cities, artists, and education in the 21st century.
“The arts saved my life.” – Jaclyn Oka, B.A. '15, World Arts and Cultures Read more…
Ali Subotnick joined the Hammer Museum as a curator in late 2006. Most recently, she organized the mid-career survey, UH-OH: Frances Stark 1991 – 2015. Other exhibitions and projects include: The Afghan Carpet Project (2015), LLYN FOULKES (2013), Mark Leckey: On Pleasure Bent (2013), Made in L.A. 2012 (co-curated with Anne Ellegood and the LA><ART team) among others. Subotnick has also curated numerous Hammer Projects and oversees the Hammer Museum’s Artists Residency program. She has written about art and culture for publications including Frieze, Parkett, ARTnews, and ArtReview. Subotnik shares five things to see and do in Los Angeles. Originally published spring 2016. Read more…
An Imaginative Offer celebrates the essential role of the arts in society. This ongoing initiative—a series of short films crafted from the unique voices of the UCLA Arts community—demonstrates our conviction that the arts are fundamental to the cognitive, critical, inquisitive life of a public research university. We believe that the practice and presence of the arts form the cornerstone of the creative, innovative thinking, and collaborative spirit that the 21st century demands.
Opening New Futures reflects the potential of architecture in the 21st century and the essential role that UCLA Architecture and Urban Design plays in defining and shaping the future of the discipline and training the next generation of creative leaders.
In 1974, the historic architectural conference, “The Whites and the Grays,” was held on campus, putting UCLA at the center of discussions around the status of architecture and its relationship to abstraction, historical representation, and the continuing suffusion of technology into design. ⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
The conference was organized by Tim Vreeland, the first chair of Architecture and Urban Design and has come to symbolize the beginning of the postmodern movement in architecture.⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀⠀
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The Whites were five New York architects—Richard Meier, Peter Eisenman, Michael Graves, Charles Gwathmey, and John Hejduk—who shared an interest in the work of Le Corbusier. The Grays—Charles Moore, Jaquelin Robertson, Robert Venturi, and Richard Weinstein—with an interest in history, aligned themselves against the international style. In addition to the Whites and the Grays, The Silvers were formed by two other UCLA architecture faculty, Cesar Pelli and Craig Hodgetts, whose work focused on high technology.
Professor Sylvia Lavin is a critic, historian, and curator whose work explores the limits of architecture across a wide spectrum of historical periods. She is the director of the critical studies, M.A., and Ph.D. programs in the Department of Architecture and Urban Design at UCLA—where she served as chair from 1996 to 2006—and director of The Curatorial Project, a collaborative design and research group that supports the critical engagement with experimental architecture in the public realm. Lavin shares five things to see and do in Los Angeles. Originally published spring 2018. Read more…
Brett Steele, dean of the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture, is an architect, teacher, writer and leading voice on the arts, architecture, cities, and education. Steele offers five things not to do in Los Angeles. Originally published fall 2017. Read more…
Kristy Edmunds, executive and artistic director of UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance is featured in this extended content from An Imaginative Offer, a series that celebrates the essential role of the arts in society. This ongoing initiative—a series of short films crafted from the unique voices of the UCLA Arts community—demonstrates our conviction that the arts are fundamental to the cognitive, critical, inquisitive life of a public research university. We believe that the practice and presence of the arts form the cornerstone of the creative, innovative thinking, and collaborative spirit that the 21st century demands.
Firmly committed to the idea that works of art are most thoroughly enjoyed as part of everyday life, the UCLA Sculpture Garden was dedicated in 1967 as the Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden, in honor of the retiring UCLA chancellor. As a result of Murphy's vision, the Sculpture Garden transformed an area of north campus into a park-like setting for some of the finest sculpture of the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.
Administered by the Hammer Museum, it is still among the most distinguished outdoor sculpture collections in the country, featuring more than 70 modern and contemporary works set across five beautifully-landscaped acres of the UCLA campus, by artists such as Richard Serra, Hans Arp, Deborah Butterfield, Alexander Calder, Barbara Hepworth, Jacques Lipchitz, Henry Moore, Auguste Rodin, and David Smith.
UCLA Department of Art Associate Professor of Painting and Drawing Silke Otto-Knapp’s work has been exhibited all over the world. Originally from Germany, Otto-Knapp has also lived and worked in London and Vienna before moving to Los Angeles. She received a Master of Fine Arts from Chelsea College of Art and Design, London, and a degree in Cultural Studies from the University of Hildesheim, Germany. Otto-Knapp offers five things to see and do in Los Angeles. Originally published spring 2017. Read more…
Extended content from An Imaginative Offer, a series that celebrates the essential role of the arts in society. This ongoing initiative—a series of short films crafted from the unique voices of the UCLA Arts community—demonstrates our conviction that the arts are fundamental to the cognitive, critical, inquisitive life of a public research university. We believe that the practice and presence of the arts form the cornerstone of the creative, innovative thinking, and collaborative spirit that the 21st century demands.
Matthew Robb joined the Fowler Museum at UCLA as chief curator in June 2016. Previously, Robb served as curator of the arts of the Americas at the de Young, one of the Fine Arts Museums of San Francisco. Robb earned an undergraduate degree in 1994 from Princeton University, a master’s degree in 1999 from the University of Texas at Austin and a Ph.D. in 2007 from Yale University, where his thesis on the apartment compounds of Teotihuacan was awarded the Frances Blanshard Fellowship Fund Prize for an Outstanding Dissertation in the History of Art. Robb offers five things to see and do in Los Angeles. Originally published winter 2017. Read more…
Gozie Ojini has been studying art since he was a child, but always felt like he had to have a plan B. “A lot of times artist or art students, especially people of color, have to defend art to people in their lives who may not understand the choice to study in this field. I've spent a lot of time trying to compromise with either family members or myself,” he says. When he graduated high school he planned to study chemistry, and then went to architecture, then graphic design, and then finally settled on art, and transferred to the UCLA Department of Art in the fall of 2017. While each of these fields of study have influenced his art practice, he is now confident in calling himself an artist. At the beginning of spring quarter, Gozie spoke with UCLA Arts in his painting studio for Distinguished Professor Lari Pittman’s advanced painting course about what drew him to the department, and how liberating it is to assert his desire to become a working artist. Read more…
Extended content from An Imaginative Offer, a series that celebrates the essential role of the arts in society. This ongoing initiative—a series of short films crafted from the unique voices of the UCLA Arts community—demonstrates our conviction that the arts are fundamental to the cognitive, critical, inquisitive life of a public research university. We believe that the practice and presence of the arts form the cornerstone of the creative, innovative thinking, and collaborative spirit that the 21st century demands.
Erkki Huhtamo is a media archaeologist, historian, and curator who holds joint appointments as a Professor in the Departments of Design Media Arts and Film, Television, and Digital Media. Huhtamo shares his "Alternative Pedestrian LA." Originally published winter 2018. Read more…
“The arts take you out of the everyday and give you a new experience.” – Ingrid Lao, M.Arch, 2016, Architecture and Urban Design. Read more…
Oscar Tsukuyama always planned to study something that would help him leave the world a better place than he found it. When he enrolled at UCLA, he planned to study Atmospheric, Environmental, and Oceanic Sciences to tackle the issues of climate change. Through pursuing his passion for theater with different campus organizations, he eventually found the World Arts and Cultures (WAC) program in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, which gave him the tools to combine his work in the arts with his desire to be an activist and affect change. The department was a natural fit. This spring, Oscar sat down with UCLA Arts to talk about his experiences at UCLA, and how his time in WAC has allowed him to shift his perspective and connect with communities through the arts. Read more…
Department of World Arts & Cultures/dance opened Glorya Kaufman Hall, made possible by an $18 million gift from Glorya Kaufman.
The donation marked the largest gift to the arts in UC history at the time, and the first core academic building on campus to be renamed for a woman.
Originally built in 1932, Kaufman Hall served as a women’s gymnasium for many years until it became the home of @uclawacd—used for dance and cultural studies as well as student and faculty performances.⠀⠀⠀
Victoria Marks, an Alpert Award winner, Guggenheim and Rauschenberg Fellow, and Fulbright Distinguished Scholar, has been practicing knowing and unknowing, and making dances for stage and film, for the past 36 years. Marks’ creative work migrates between “choreo-portraits” and “action conversations” for individuals who don’t identify as dancers, and dances for dancers that fuel her inquiries into movement. Since 1995, Marks has been a professor of choreography at UCLA, and since 2014, chair of the disability studies minor. Marks shares five things to see and do around Los Angeles. Originally published winter 2016. Read more…
“Artists are essential to our humanity and to our culture. The arts exist within a broader context of human knowledge – across disciplines and fields of study. They’ve been here since the very beginning and provide meaning and context for everything. We can’t be human without the arts.” – Casey Reas, Professor, Department of Design Media Arts Read more…
Brian Bress is an artist living and working in Los Angeles. Bress received a B.F.A. in film, animation, and video from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1998, an M.F.A. in painting and drawing from the UCLA Department of Art in 2006, and a M.E. from the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in 2007. Bress shares five things to see and do in Los Angeles. Originally published fall 2016. Read more…
In 1956, the Grunwald Graphic Arts Foundation was established with a gift of 5,000 prints from Fred Grunwald. The collection has been steadily enriched through significant acquisitions and donations. Now, in 2019, it houses 45,000 prints, drawings, photographs, and art books at the Hammer Museum.
“As a grad student I had the resources, support and time to do what I needed to do. I was looking for an environment in which I would be exposed to many different forms of artistic and intellectual stimulation. Art school seemed cool, but at UCLA I worked with people across disciplines—people at the national science foundation, computer science students, engineers—and I had access to professors who changed my life.” –Aaron Koblin, M.F.A. ’06, Design Media Arts Read more…
Greg Lynn is a professor in the UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design (UCLA A.UD). Lynn has been an influential figure at the cutting edge of architecture and design culture across three decades. The buildings, projects, publications, teachings, and writings associated with his studio, Greg Lynn FORM, have been influential in the acceptance and use of advanced materials and technologies for design and fabrication. A faculty member at UCLA Architecture and Urban Design (UCLA AUD) since 1996, Lynn teaches studio and leads the development of the department’s experimental research robotics lab. Lynn shares five things to see and do in Los Angeles. Originally published fall 2015. Read more…
“This program has been the most transformative, awesome, crazy experience I've ever had in my life.” - Zakk Marquez '15, B.A., World Arts and Cultures Read more…
When Jade Charon Robertson was preparing to move to Los Angeles to study in the M.F.A program in the UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance (WACD), prominent examples of police brutality including the deaths of Trayvon Martin, Sandra Bland, and others came under close public scrutiny. As she began her studies at UCLA, she was inspired to create work that brought awareness to social issues. Inspired by the Black Arts Movement, Jade believes that as an artist in our current climate, her work must be functional in order to be beautiful. For the past three years, she has been creating choreographic studies around Black Lives Matter and black social issues, including her thesis project, which she presented at UCLA in 2018.
In addition to developing her research and artistic practice at UCLA, Jade has founded a mentorship program for young girls of color, produced a dance festival for women of color to showcase their artistic projects, and created an inclusive and affordable line of dance clothing. she also worked with students in the Watts-Willowbrook Boys and Girls Club in a variety of contexts, including a dance film that garnered attention from the New York Times.
An artist, choreographer, dancer, mentor, scholar, and entrepreneur, Jade’s experience at UCLA has been one of transformation and growth. This spring, before a rehearsal for her thesis presentation, she spoke with UCLA Arts about her experiences over the past three years. Read more…
Distinguished Professor Thom Mayne is featured in content from An Imaginative Offer, a series that celebrates the essential role of the arts in society. This ongoing initiative—a series of short films crafted from the unique voices of the UCLA Arts community—demonstrates our conviction that the arts are fundamental to the cognitive, critical, inquisitive life of a public research university. We believe that the practice and presence of the arts form the cornerstone of the creative, innovative thinking, and collaborative spirit that the 21st century demands.
Mark Mack is a professor in the UCLA Department of Architecture and Urban Design (UCLA AUD). “I like music, food, funky architecture, unusual institutions, and nature; most of my selections of what to do in LA center on these subjects. I live in the historic Venice canals where I am very happy to be, so most of my ventures outside of this almost paradisiacal place involve the vices in which I engage.” Mack shares five things to see and do in Los Angeles. Originally published spring 2015. Read more…
“Art is an important form of knowledge that can’t be taught with words.” – Miguel Angel Flores , B.A., Art. Read more…
Peter Lunenfeld is a professor and vice chair in the UCLA Department of Design Media Arts. Peter Lunenfeld's work on digital culture can be mapped via a Venn diagram that includes media philosophy, design theory, art criticism, urban history and digital humanities. Books include: The Secret War Between Downloading and Uploading (winner of the 2013 Dorothy Lee Prize); Digital_Humanities (co-authored with Anne Burdick, Johanna Drucker, Todd Presner, and Jeffrey Schnapp); USER: InfoTechnoDemo, Snap to Grid; and The Digital Dialectic (all from MIT Press). He is the creator and editorial director of the award-winning Mediawork project, a cross-platform publishing series for the MIT Press. Lunenfeld shares five things to see and do in Los Angeles. Originally published winter 2015. Read more…
After years of working as a musician and freelance graphic designer while attending community colleges in the Pacific Northwest, Jen Agosta decided to move to Los Angeles to pursue a degree in design and media art at UCLA in order to take her career to the next level. As a nontraditional student, the process of transferring was challenging, but worth it. She credits her UCLA education with opening doors that she never knew were there for her and inspiring her to continue her artistic practice. This spring, Jen Agosta sat down with UCLA Arts to discuss her journey to UCLA and the experiences she has had over the past two years in the Department of Design Media Arts (DMA). Read more…
“The sense of community in the Department of Design Media Arts is incredible, the camaraderie infectious…I felt so supported by my fellow colleagues. We all wanted each other to succeed. We all made each other better.” - Christine Annette Jackson '15, B.A., Design Media Arts Read more…
As an artist, curator, artistic director and frequent consultant internationally, Kristy Edmunds holds a reputation for innovation and depth in the presentation of contemporary art in all disciplines, with a particular emphasis on contemporary performing arts. Her expertise and professional relationships with some of the masters of the 20th and 21st Century performing artists, in addition to critical innovators in all disciplines of artistic practice has given her the reputation of possessing a depth of knowledge across a variety of art forms and projects. Edmunds shares five things to see and do in Los Angeles. Originally published fall 2014. Read more…
Professor Rebeca Méndez is featured in this extended content from An Imaginative Offer, a series that celebrates the essential role of the arts in society. This ongoing initiative—a series of short films crafted from the unique voices of the UCLA Arts community—demonstrates our conviction that the arts are fundamental to the cognitive, critical, inquisitive life of a public research university. We believe that the practice and presence of the arts form the cornerstone of the creative, innovative thinking, and collaborative spirit that the 21st century demands.
"Artistic practice is the cultivation of sensitivity to the world. It is our job, whether or not we are artists, to cultivate and attend to the things that we love, notice or are sensitive to. We must continually try because, perhaps, we are uniquely equipped or situated to bring something to life that might otherwise disappear." –Jennifer Bolande, Professor, Department of Art Read more…
The School of the Arts and Architecture’s Visual and Performing Arts Education Program (VAPAE) fosters the creative and intellectual growth of UCLA Arts students while providing much needed arts education curricula to children in underserved communities. A key tenant of the VAPAE program is to offer students experiential opportunities to develop into qualified teaching artists and introduces them to a range of possible careers in the art.
During her time at UCLA, Christina Moushoul has accomplished things she never imagined would be part of her college experience. She found ways to design a unique educational experience that combined her interests across a variety of disciplines, which led to a job working for media artist Refik Anadol (M.F.A. '14, Department of Design Media Arts) on his ongoing collaboration with the LA Phil. Through producing major events with professional artists and working late into the night on demanding projects alongside her peers in the architecture studios, Christina developed the passion, confidence, and drive to take on the challenges facing artists and architects today. Read more…
Launched in 2018, 10 Questions is a hybrid academic course and public events series that provides a platform for vibrant interdisciplinary conversations. UCLA Arts public invited to join UCLA students in the classroom for an energetic exchange of ideas featuring leading scholars from across UCLA as they come together to explore essential questions.
Giving community members a special opportunity to experience the conversations that drive innovation at the university, in the fall quarter of 2019, the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture presents 10 Questions: Centennial Edition, an interdisciplinary course/public event series hybrid, featuring conversations with leading faculty, distinguished alumni, and experts from across the university and beyond. Every Tuesday evening for ten weeks, experts in disciplines as diverse as dance, psychology, astrophysics, Chicanx studies, law, philosophy, biology, and more will join choreographer and Associate Dean, Academic Affairs Victoria Marks to explore one question each week.
As a marquee event for UCLA’s yearlong Centennial Celebration, the Centennial Edition of 10 Questions provides a platform for vibrant conversations that engage multiple disciplinary viewpoints, seeding greater understanding of the profoundly interdisciplinary nature of knowledge and knowledge production, while offering a robust framework in which to envision and activate the role that the university can play as it embarks on its next 100 years as the world’s leading public research university.
Both an upper division undergraduate course and a series of public conversations open to the broader community, "10 Questions” will provide a platform for vibrant conversations that engage multiple disciplinary viewpoints.
