2023-24 In Review

AN END-OF-YEAR MESSAGE FROM INTERIM DEAN LIONEL POPKIN

2023-24 In Review

When I stepped into the role of interim dean of the School of the Arts and Architecture earlier this year, I already knew our school was one of the most thoughtful, dynamic, and dedicated collections of individuals I have ever known. As we close the books on the 2023-24 academic year — and what has been a particularly complex spring for all of us at UCLA — my admiration and appreciation for every member of the UCLA Arts community has only grown deeper. 

To our students: You bring our mission to life and challenge us to do better. You have navigated through another unprecedented year. This is no small feat. Your honesty and creativity have not only enriched our campus community, but have also helped us think critically about and make more sense of our complex, ever-changing world—which I believe you all are going to make a better place as you continue on your respective paths. 

Our staff have worked tirelessly to support our faculty, our students, and each other. You consistently exceed the bounds of your individual roles to take care of our community. I am in awe of your commitment and profoundly grateful for your dedicated service. 

To our faculty: your dedication and service have cultivated an environment in which our students have been able to explore, create, and express their unique voices through their work. You are the foundation upon which they are shaping their futures. 

The directors of our two museums and our performing arts program have led their respective institutions through another year of growth and change, curating public programming that has enriched the cultural life of our campus and city. 

And finally, I’d like to express my gratitude to the families and chosen families, friends, donors, supporters, and partners who have helped to make this school year a success. We couldn’t do it without you and are grateful for your engagement and dedication. 

Before we sign off for what I hope will be a restful, restorative summer, I invite you to join me in reflecting on the many highlights of this past year, which my indefatigable team has compiled for you below.

Wishing you all the best and look forward to seeing you in the fall.

Lionel Popkin
Interim Dean, UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture

 

CELEBRATING THE UCLA ARTS CLASS OF 2024


The Class of 2024 celebrates commencement at UCLA's Los Angeles Tennis Center. (Todd Cheney)

On Saturday, June 15, hundreds of students, faculty, staff, friends, and family gathered at the Los Angeles Tennis Center to celebrate this year’s graduating class. Commencement was an opportunity to celebrate the many accomplishments, opinions, and dreams of the Class of 2024.

The undergraduate and graduate student speakers, Anaís Orozco and Brenton Zola, reflected on their time at UCLA and provided insight into the artist's power to transform society.

Our keynote speaker, Amir H. Fallah, a UCLA Arts alumnus and artist, spoke candidly about his childhood in Iran during the Islamic Revolution and war’s devastating effect on all peoples. He artfully balanced the personal with the informative by also sharing stories from his time at UCLA and by providing invaluable guidance to the Class of 2024. Amir’s speech ultimately shed light on the importance of resilience and determination to one’s personal and professional success.

It was a celebratory culmination to the 2023-24 academic year.

 

TRANSITIONS


Faculty retiring this year include Patty Wickman, top left, Catherine Opie, top right, Christian Moeller, bottom left, and Dan Froot.

Every year we mark the departure of some honored members of our faculty. This year, we express our appreciation for: 

  • Catherine Opie, a professor in the Department of Art, who is retiring after 27 years of service;
  • Patty Wickman, a professor in the Department of Art, who is retiring after 39 years of service;
  • Christian Moeller, a professor in the Department of Design Media Arts, who is retiring after 23 years of service;
  • and Dan Froot, a professor in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, who will transition to research professor after 23 years of service.

This year, we are also grateful to faculty who have served in leadership roles:

  • Lionel Popkin, who assumed the role of Interim Dean after serving as the Associate Dean, Academic Affairs since July 2021;
  • Steve Anderson, who assumed the role of Associate Dean, Academic Affairs;
  • Rodney McMillian, who assumed the role of chair of the Department of Art in the fall;
  • Eddo Stern, who assumed the role of chair of the Department of Design Media Arts in the fall;
  • and Mariana Ibañez and Janet O’Shea, who continued to serve as chairs of the departments of Architecture and Urban Design and World Arts and Cultures/Dance, respectively.

UCLA Arts also welcomed seven new faculty this year. Of the school’s 57 tenured faculty, nearly 50% have been appointed over the past eight years, marking an important influx of new creative and intellectual capital to our already impressive academic core. This year we welcomed: Samaa Elimam and Salmaan Craig in Architecture and Urban Design; Gelare Khoshgozaran in Art;  Mindy Seu and Romi Morrison in Design Media Arts; and Kate Ladenheim and Ayasha Guerin in World Arts and Cultures/Dance. 

Our dedicated staff are the heart and soul of the institution. This year, we express our appreciation for the following members of our community who are retiring after a remarkable 71 years of collective service:

  • Marcia Argolo, manager for the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, who is retiring after 24 years of service;
  • Robert Loveless, the AV supervisor at the Hammer Museum, who is retiring after 17 years of service;
  • and Teddy Puzie, security officer at the Hammer Museum, who is retiring after 30 years of service. 

Thank you to all faculty and staff for their tireless dedication to upholding the integrity and mission of the UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture. 

 

A YEAR OF GROWTH AND EVOLUTION

The following are just a few highlights demonstrating how our collective efforts across the year provided our students, our campus, and our broader community with vital education and transformative experiences in the arts:

Centering Anti-Racism, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion

While aligning with Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost Darnell Hunt’s focus on inclusive excellence, this year we centered community engaged scholarship and artmaking as frameworks, supported faculty retention and campus climate efforts, and conducted faculty and leadership searches reflective of our commitment. Chairs and faculty navigated and led departmental visioning and execution that reframed AEDI for their agendas and agency. From the Faculty Executive Committee’s discourse to new curriculum designs, we persisted in demonstrating UCLA’s commitment to diversity. Senate faculty, lecturers, and graduate students advanced our agreement to express AEDI across the school.

Our administration and staff fostered a culture of belonging for students and amongst each other. The breadth of our AEDI efforts were felt in exhibitions, honored in student services, and lived by our staffs’ day to day collaborations.

This year’s newly constituted AEDI Council began developing a bias mitigation process built on principals of restorative justice. The Dean’s Student Council inspired the Associate Dean/Executive Director of AEDI to initiate a Departmental Student Group pilot in which a new dedicated funding allocation fortified impactful student led programs by students from our Architecture and Urban Design and World Arts and Cultures departments.

We sought to honor California’s mandate to create cohorts reflective of our State’s population, resulting in admissions and enrollment of new Bruins who reflect more of California’s great diversity. 

The creative direction of the leaders of our public arts units amplified the school’s AEDI values. 

Groundbreaking Research and Cultural Impact


Associate Professor Georgina Huljich and Marcelo Spina’s firm Patterns was honored by the AIA/LA Awards. (Patterns)

As a public research university committed to the creation and application of knowledge for the betterment of our global society, this past year UCLA Arts’ innovative programs, labs, and faculty-led initiatives continued to deliver pioneering work while grappling with some of the world’s most pressing challenges.

Department of Architecture and Urban Design professor and director of cityLAB Dana Cuff was featured in the Los Angeles Times for her contributions to the creation of UCLA’s on-campus BruinHubs, spaces where student commuters can rest and study. She also served as UCLA’s 135th Faculty Research Lecturer to discuss the challenges surrounding architecture's ability to design more equitable futures. The annual Faculty Research Lectures recognize two UCLA Academic Senate members with records of exceptional achievement in research and/or creative activities.

The American Institute of Architects (AIA) California presented its 2024 Firm Award to Department of Architecture and Urban Design alumnus and UCLA Arts board member Frederick Fisher M.Arch. ‘75 and the Lifetime Achievement Award to Professor Emeritus Thom Mayne. Several faculty — including Georgina Huljich, Kevin Daly, Todd Lynch, and Mohamed Sharif — were also recognized with AIALA 2024 awards.

Architecture Ph.D. candidates Dexter Walcott and Shota Vashakmadze organized a two-day conference called "Architecture After a Green New Deal." The conference created an opportunity for dialogue between architects, scholars, urban designers, and environmentalists with the shared aim of averting climate disaster. 


Installation view of Scratching at the Moon, an exhibition co-curated by Associate Professor Anna Sew Hoy at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. (Jeff McLane / ICA LA)

Department of Art Associate Professor Anna Sew Hoy co-curated the critically-acclaimed exhibition Scratching at the Moon at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles. It is described as “the first focused survey of Asian American artists in a major Los Angeles contemporary art museum.” The exhibition remains on view through July 28.

In January, Department of Art Professor Cauleen Smith received a career-expansive profile in the New York Times. “I find L.A. beautiful and horrific, and I love trying to see it that way,” Smith told journalist Siddhartha Mitter. “You can have such profound rage at the city and then be gobstopped at a giant feral bush of bougainvillea. And there’s someone sleeping underneath that bush. It’s all of it at once.”

UCLA Arts board member and Department of Design Media Arts lecturer and alumnus Refik Anadol was named the 2024 Edward A. Dickson Alumnus of the Year for his expansive and innovative artistic vision that is reshaping society’s understanding of the relationship between data, technology, and the human experience. Anadol is one of the world’s best-known media artists and his work often addresses larger social and cultural issues including climate change, mental health, and the power and limits of artificial intelligence.


Installation view of Professor Lauren Lee McCarthy's Bodily Autonomy. (Mandeville Art Gallery)

Department of Design Media Arts Professor Lauren Lee McCarthy’s solo exhibition, Bodily Autonomy, at UC San Diego’s Mandeville Art Gallery opened to rave reviews. The show brought together two major new works — Surrogate and Saliva — to examine bio-surveillance. Surrogate took the form of performances, videos, and installations wherein McCarthy offered her body up as a remote-controlled surrogate to individuals and couples interested in having a child. Saliva was a series of performances, installations, and videos about DNA sampling and data harvesting through the routine collection of swabs and spit.

Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance Associate Professor Bryonn Bain hosted Literary Liberation, a concert featuring poetry from 12 UCLA students and 12 women from the Victorville Federal Correctional Institution, on Friday, March 15. With live instrumental accompaniment, a DJ, and one another for support, the spoken word poetry traversed themes of deeply personal trauma, the battle for reproductive rights, political conflict, perspectives on individuality, motherhood and sisterhood, and even a bit of comedy about what it’s like to be in prison.

California Humanities recently announced the June 2024 Humanities For All Project Grant awards. Koreatown Storytelling Program (KSP), a project of the Koreatown Youth and Community Center, has been awarded $25,000 for its project entitled “Traditional Healing Arts in Koreatown.” David Shorter, professor in the Department of World Arts and Culture/Dance, will serve as the Humanities Advisor to the yearlong project, and the KSP oral history narratives of traditional healers will be archived at the UCLA Archive for Healing.

UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance Assistant Professor Tria Blu Wakpa was awarded the 2023 Selma Jeanne Cohen Dance Lecture Award from the Fulbright Association. Her research and teaching combine community-based, Indigenous, and feminist methodologies with critical race theories to examine the politics and practices of dance and other movement practices.

IN Series honored Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance Distinguished Professor Peter Sellars during its 2024 Gala. The famed opera director received the first-ever June Jordan Award on Thursday, May 2. The Award recognizes “living creative voices whose body of work reflects the poetic principles exuding the many writings, workings, and wonderings of luminary poet and activist June Jordan.”

A grant from the National Endowment for the Arts will fund a multiyear creative research project at UWM to support the creation and presentation of a new dance theater work from choreographer and UCLA Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance Distinguished Professor David Roussève. With the $50,000 grant, the Department of Dance in the Peck School of the Arts will work with community partner Diverse and Resilient and UWM’s LGBTQ+ Resource Center to launch Care: Illuminating Milwaukee’s Queer and Trans Vogue Dance Community. Roussève will serve as the artistic lead of the project.

When the fall term began at UCLA, there was a new major on campus: Disability Studies. It was the first time a California college had made it a full-fledged major. Victoria Marks, a professor of choreography in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance, chairs the multidisciplinary program. “We have faculty from all across the campus contributing research and teaching to the major,” explained Marks. “So we're looking at history, law, rights and representation, access, identity, culture, and politics. We have faculty members from the humanities, the social sciences, health care, public policy, the arts, which is where I'm from, technology and education.”


Steve Anderson’s “Ask the Joshua Tree” builds awareness of the uncertain future for thse endangered trees and the Mojave Desert landscape. (Steve Anderson / UCLA)

A meditation on aging and identity for a solo dancer. An attempt to “hear” the needs of endangered Joshua trees. A slightly whimsical digital media exploration of C-rated Los Angeles restaurants. These are among the 10 wide-ranging faculty-led projects awarded seed funding this year through the UCLA Chancellor’s Arts Initiative grant program. Several UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture faculty — such as Steve Anderson, Bryonn Bain, David Roussève, Eddo Stern, and Casey Reas — have been awarded seed funding.

 

Community Engagement


Yummy Bowl attendees select from a bevy of handemade bowls. (Lucza Brewer / UCLA Arts)

In alignment with UCLA’s Strategic Plan and to more deeply center and build upon the school’s commitment to all forms of social justice and community-engagement, faculty and staff spearheaded several community outreach projects and events. Highlights include: 

In March, the UCLA Downtown Programming Committee selected 31 UCLA programs to activate the new UCLA Downtown site including five projects led by the school’s esteemed faculty — Dana Cuff, Bryonn Bain, Ayasha Guerin, and Eddo Stern — as well as a schoolwide initiative entitled UCLA Arts DTLA, which seeks to activate UCLA Downtown with dynamic public arts programming curated by UCLA’s world-class arts organizations and programs. UCLA Arts’ is committed to long term collaboration with campus partners that positively impacts the lives of both Bruins and Angelenos and looks forward to bringing these projects to life in the coming academic year and beyond. 

In May, over 175 people gathered at Broad Art Center Plaza to select from roughly 350 handmade bowls and enjoy a delicious meal for the 3rd annual Yummy Bowl Benefit, hosted by the Department of Art and its Ceramics Area. The Yummy Bowl Benefit was created in 2021 by Department of Art professors Candice Lin and Anna Sew Hoy. They launched the inaugural fundraiser after learning that over 40% of UC students reported being food insecure. This year’s benefit raised $11,047, both exceeding its goal and besting previous Yummy Bowls.

Last month, UCLA’s Center for Community Engagement awarded two of our departments nearly $230,000 in combined funding to build capacity to support community-engaged teaching during the 2024-25 academic year. A core element of UCLA’s commitment to deepening engagement with Los Angeles, this funding will allow the Department of Architecture and Urban Design to establish a new Community Partnerships Coordinator position and the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance to support a Community Partners Liaison, TA positions specifically geared towards community engaged teaching, student travel, and community partners. We are grateful for the support and look forward to expanding our commitment to community engaged teaching across the school.


New Air 1, by Iman Person, is part of Atmosphere of Sound: Sonic Art in Times of Climate Disruption from the UCLA Art | Sci Center. (Iman Person)

UCLA is the single largest granted institution in this year’s PST ART: Art & Science Collide, with nearly $2 million in research and exhibition support from Getty. The UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture boasts a prominent, expansive presence, with six programs and exhibitions spanning July 20, 2024, through May 25, 2025. Aside from exhibitions and programs organized by the Fowler, the Hammer, and CAP UCLA, two UCLA Arts research centers will be presenting exhibitions: 

Atmosphere of Sound: Sonic Art in Times of Climate Disruption, from the Art | Sci Center and curated by Victoria Vesna and Anuradha Vikram, begins Sept. 26 across multiple campus venues. Thirteen artists, including Bill Fontana, Iman Person, Patricia Cadavid, Amber Stucke, Yolande Harris, and more, bring interactive installations, live performances, sound walks, and more experiences that demonstrate that ambiguities of sound can help audiences understand the rapidly shifting state of the climate and its effects on the physical world. 

Presented at Human Resources in Chinatown, Art and the Internet in L.A. from UCLA Arts Conditional Studio expands the school’s presence into downtown Los Angeles. This exhibition, beginning Oct. 5, invites a roster of contemporary artists living and working in Los Angeles — including several UCLA Arts alumni like Devin Kenny, Ann Haeyoung, Jules Kris, Xin Xin, and more —  to respond to the 50-year history of artists creating work on and with the internet.

 

Impact Through Arts Education (VAPAE)


UCLA students of Arts Education 108 share a multidisciplinary performance project for Grand Arts High School students. (Lucza Brewer / UCLA Arts)

This year, the Visual and Performing Arts Education (VAPAE) Program continued to provide innovative coursework about the rich history and theories of arts education for its 110 undergraduate students from UCLA Arts and beyond. 

  • 16 VAPAE undergraduate student teachers completed the Arts Education Teaching Sequence, providing 64 hours of arts instruction that reached over 350 K-12 students across nine of VAPAE’s Los Angeles partner school;
  • VAPAE’s community arts programs provided 71 hours of instruction, reaching 163 K-12 students.

In October, VAPAE Director Kevin Kane spoke at “Arts and Music for All: A New Era in Creative Workforce Prep" at UCLA Luskin Conference Center. Many esteemed speakers and panelists were in attendance to discuss California Proposition 28 — the largest investment in arts and music in our nation’s history.

VAPAE’s Research and Evaluation Specialist Lindsey Kunisaki was recently named the 2024 Laura Zucker Fellow for Arts for LA. She was also a guest on the UCLA Arts podcast Work In Progress, where she discussed Prop 28 and the importance of culturally sustaining pedagogy.

Kane and Kunisaki also presented a study investigating how emerging teaching artists’ practices of reciprocity enacted social justice in a multigenerational afterschool arts program at the American Educational Research Association (AERA) Annual Meeting in Philadelphia.

 

Deepening our Engagement with Los Angeles

This year, we continued to engage the campus and region’s diverse audiences through dynamic public programming at our two world-class museums and groundbreaking performing arts center. 

Fowler Museum at UCLA


Attendees view artwork in the Fowler Museum exhibition I Will Meet You Yet Again: Contemporary Sikh Art. (Todd Westphal)

In 2023-24, the Fowler Museum at UCLA celebrated its 60th anniversary. The Fowler stands as a testament to the power of cultural exchange and artistic exploration. With a rich, storied history, this renowned institution has become an essential part of the local and global art and cultural scene.

In February, the Fowler’s permanent, voluntary return of objects to the Asante Kingdom in Ghana made national and international headlines. The news was reported by the New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Art Newspaper, and other major outlets. The objects were personally handed over by Silvia Forni, the Shirley & Ralph Shapiro Director of the Fowler Museum; Erica P. Jones, Senior Curator of African Arts and Manager of Curatorial Affairs; and Rachel Raynor, Director of Registration and Collections Management, to Otumfuo Osei Tutu II, the Asante king, in Ghana.

Next month the Fowler will return 20 objects to Australia’s Warumungu peoples, a Northern Australia aboriginal group, and will later return objects to Australia’s Larrakia peoples. These returns were made possible after many months of collaboration with the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) and demonstrate the Fowler’s commitment to responsible stewardship and the preservation and exploration of global arts and cultures.

In 2023-24, the Fowler opened several groundbreaking, critically-acclaimed exhibitions:

Just around the corner, the Fowler Museum will open Sangre de Nopal/Blood of the Nopal: Tanya Aguiñiga & Porfirio Gutiérrez en Conversación/in Conversation with a celebration on Saturday, July 20. Organized by the Museum of Contemporary Art Santa Barbara and the Fowler Museum at UCLA, and part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide, this exhibition features new commissions and existing work from fiber artists Tanya Aguiñiga and Porfirio Gutiérrez alongside Oaxacan textiles from the Fowler collection.

And in January 2025, the Fowler will open its second PST ART exhibition, Fire Kinship: Southern California Native Ecology and Art. Fire Kinship argues for a return to Native practices in which fire is regarded as a vital aspect of land stewardship, community well-being, and tribal sovereignty.

The Hammer Museum at UCLA


Ann Philbin, left, at her final gala as the director of the Hammer Museum, with Jane Fonda, center, and Jodie Foster. (Michelle Groskopf / New York Times)

The Hammer finished 2023 with its highest attendance in its history (~280,000 people), a testament to longtime director Ann Philbin’s leadership. 

In October 2023, Philbin, who over 25 years of visionary leadership transformed the Hammer Museum at UCLA into one of the world’s leading contemporary art museums, announced she will be stepping down as the Hammer’s director in November 2024.

In February 2024, the Hammer announced the curators for Made in L.A. 2025 — Paulina Pobocha (Hammer Senior Curator) and Essence Harden (California African American Museum). The next edition of the biennial will open in fall 2025.

In May 2024, Philbin hosted her final gala at the Hammer. The event was attended by arts and culture luminaries including artists Catherine Opie, Barbara Kruger, Lari Pittman, Mark Bradford, Robert Gober, Kara Walker, Andrea Bowers, Jonas Wood; cultural leaders Michael Govan (LACMA), Thelma Golden (Studio Museum of Harlem), Michael Titlebaum (MFA Boston),  Katherine Flemming (J. Paul Getty Trust), Anne Elgood (ICA LA); and actors and entertainers such as Jodie Foster, Keanu Reeves, k.d. Lang, Will Ferrell, Jane Fonda, Ava DuVernay, and more. The evening raised $2.5 million.

The Hammer presented several acclaimed exhibitions in 2023-24 including:

  • Made in L.A. 2023: Acts of Living, which opened in October 2023. This sixth iteration of the Hammer’s biennial exhibition highlighted the practices of artists working throughout the greater Los Angeles area, and featured several UCLA Arts alumni including Jackie Amézquita, Roksana Pirouzmand, Luis Bermudez, and more.
  • Only the Young: Experimental Art in Korea, 1960s–1970s opened in February 2024. Only the Young is the first North American exhibition to explore the groundbreaking work of a generation of artists who emerged in the decades following the Korean War.
  • The career expansive Becoming Van Leo opened in July 2023 and it was the first international survey of work by the late Armenian Egyptian photographer.

Currently on display at the Hammer are David Medalla: In Conversation with the Cosmos and Refashioning: CFGNY & Wataru Tominaga. Also on display is Houseguest: Mute Flesh, an exhibition curated by UCLA Arts alumnus EJ Hill.

Classroom-in-Residence at the Hammer (CRH) had another successful year. CRH, a free, innovative program designed to strengthen student and teacher learning about art through a weeklong, immersive experience at the Hammer, is a unique collaboration between the Hammer Museum, VAPAE, and selected Title I public school teachers.

Opening in September 2024 is Breath(e): Toward Climate and Social Justice. Part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide, Breath(e) considers environmental art practices that address the climate crisis and anthropogenic disasters and their inescapable intersection with issues of equity and social justice.

UCLA's Center for the Art of Performance


The marquee of the new UCLA Nimoy Theater in Westwood. (Noah Webb)

This year, UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance (CAP UCLA) celebrated many firsts!

Edgar Miramontes served his first year as executive and artistic director of CAP UCLA. Miramontes came to CAP UCLA from REDCAT (Roy and Enda Disney/CalArts Theater), where he served as deputy executive director and curator.

CAP UCLA celebrated the opening of a new venue: the UCLA Nimoy Theater. In 2018, CAP UCLA and the School of the Arts and Architecture acquired Westwood’s Crest Theatre, with a lead donation from Susan Bay Nimoy, widow of actor Leonard Nimoy. Following extensive renovation, the Crest reopened last September as The Nimoy, a state-of-the art performance space that welcomes a roster of diverse artists to develop and present new work in music, theater, and literary and digital media arts, all programmed by CAP UCLA.

The Nimoy’s inaugural season received great audience response and attendance with regularly sold-out performances. Highlights include yMusic, Ronnie Burkett Theatre of Marionettes, Eighth Blackbird, Third Coast Percussion as well as a residency from Grammy Award-winning poet J. Ivy.  

On June 20, CAP UCLA announced Miramontes’ inaugural season. Featuring over 80 visionary artists representing over 10 countries, Miramontes’ curation for the 2024-25 season unites the global and local. Highlights include Gregory Maqoma, The Javaad Alipoor Company, Jay Carlon, David T. Little’s Black Lodge, Live Night: Cruising Bodies, Spirits, and Machines, which is part of PST ART: Art & Science Collide, and much more.

2024-25 promises to usher a bold new vision and thrilling direction for CAP UCLA, redefining the landscape of performance and community engagement in Southern California. 

 

Transformational philanthropic support


Fourth-year dancers deliver a night of mesmerizing choreography and breathtaking performances for their senior projects. (Lucza Brewer / UCLA Arts)

Philanthropic support makes a world of difference at UCLA Arts, and this past year has been no exception. We anticipate closing the fiscal year with nearly $30M in philanthropic dollars raised. 

Gifts from our extraordinary donors boosted our endowment for need-based scholarships by nearly $3.5 million. Another significant contribution received this year will establish an endowed term chair to provide research funding for faculty in the Department of Art. Generous support, in the form of current-use scholarships and fellowships, helped to relieve students of their financial stress and achieve their dreams. Support for programs and faculty research enabled significant projects and ideas to evolve and flourish.

Moving forward, we will continue to focus on raising financial support for our academic programs and initiatives. Student financial support remains a top priority with a goal of providing a debt-free UCLA Arts education on the horizon.  

Philanthropic support is critical to nurturing the next generation of artists and creative leaders and we are grateful to our many supporters for their generosity throughout this past year. 

 

LOOKING AHEAD


A student with a decorated mortar board at the UCLA Arts Class of 2024 commencement ceremony. (Todd Cheney)

In September, we will welcome a new cohort of 345 extraordinary undergraduate and graduate students to campus. UCLA Arts consistently attracts an exceptional pool of applicants and is one of the most applied to schools in the nation. For Fall 2024: 

  • 81% of our incoming first year undergraduates are California residents,
  • 34% are transfer students, 
  • and 23% are first generation college students. 

We cannot wait to meet them!

The 2023-24 year will also bring another exciting calendar of public events to the arts at UCLA. From the Hammer to the Fowler and the much anticipated inaugural season of CAP UCLA’s new executive and artistic director Edgar Miramontes, there will be many opportunities for our broader community to engage with the arts at UCLA in the year ahead. 

We look forward to seeing you on campus next year.

Header image: Royce Hall and Powell Library at sunset. (UCLA)

 

Stay engaged. Use #UCLAarts to stay connected.
image   image   image   image