Fall 2025 Message from Interim Dean Lionel Popkin
There is an undeniable energy on campus as the fall quarter begins: new students finding their way, returning students reconnecting, and faculty and staff preparing for the year ahead.
With the 2025-26 academic year, UCLA Arts welcomes 280 new undergraduate and graduate students and four new faculty members: Troy Montes Michie and Molly Zuckerman-Hartung in the Department of Art, Sahej Rahal in the Department of Design Media Arts, and Rebekah J. Kowal in the Department of World Arts and Cultures/Dance. Welcome to all of you. We are so excited to have you as part of our community.
On Sept. 24, we kicked off the year with our annual Creating Community opening celebration. It was uplifting to see so many members of our community—students, faculty, staff, and alumni—gather to mark this new beginning.
Moments of connection like this matter, perhaps now more than ever. We are living in an incredibly charged, complex, and difficult time, facing unprecedented challenges across the spectrum. Many of us are navigating heightened emotions: fear, anxiety, and uncertainty about what lies ahead. The divisions we see in our country and the challenges to higher education and the arts are real and ongoing.
And yet, one of the most meaningful ways we can resist is by refusing division—by coming together, by staying connected, and by persisting at doing what we do every day as artists, architects, students, researchers, educators, and supporters of arts and education: asking questions, making connections, creating. These acts are inherently optimistic, generative, and life-affirming. In times like these, they are not just meaningful—they are essential.
The work we do at UCLA Arts matters. Our students, faculty, staff, and alumni are instigators and catalysts for change who look beyond the world as it is to imagine what it could be. We give voice, consideration, and shape to questions, ideas, and possibilities that might not otherwise find form or reach an audience.
As interim dean, I am committed to nurturing a community grounded in intellectual curiosity, critical engagement, and creative exploration—one in which every member feels seen, supported, and empowered to contribute. We aspire to be a place built on pluralism and inclusivity, one that embraces freedom of speech and expression and encourages respectful debate. We are a community where we can agree, disagree, or agree to disagree—while collectively working to shape a better world and offer new ways of seeing, understanding, and imagining what is possible.
So, we will continue to do what we have always done: make the work. We will provide the mentorship, support, and encouragement needed to guide and educate the next generation of creators, thinkers, and makers who will strive to make that better world one project, one conversation, one connection at a time.
This fall, our community will have many opportunities to come together and engage across our school:
- Made in L.A. 2025, which opened this past weekend, is the seventh iteration of the Hammer Museum’s signature biennial exhibition that showcases artists practicing throughout the greater Los Angeles area. This year's exhibition features work from five UCLA Arts alumni and a monthly choreographic performance created by World Arts and Cultures/Dance Associate Professor Will Rawls that explores the daily frictions of life across L.A.'s built environments.
- Construction, Occupation, an exhibition co-curated by World Arts and Culture Associate Professor Alex Ungprateeb Flynn that is currently on view at the Fowler Museum, examines the intersections of art, activism, and social justice through the lens of urban transformation.
- The School of the Arts and Architecture Inaugural Student Exhibition, curated by Associate Dean Anya Booker and Sepia Collective and on view on the 8th floor of the Broad Art Center through Friday, May 29, was conceived not merely as a showcase of student’s remarkable work, but as a way to open the Dean’s office to the students in our school.
- On Oct. 17 and 18, celebrated dance-theater artist and Distinguished Professor Emeritus David Roussève brings Becoming Daddy AF to CAP UCLA's Nimoy Theater. An intimate meditation on life's purpose, this not-to-be-missed work is Roussève's first full-length solo performance in more than 20 years.
- The Fowler Museum’s annual Textile Council Sale—a beloved tradition and chance to support the museum while scoring some incredible finds—returns on Oct. 18.
- And finally, on Oct. 31, Design Media Arts Professor Peter Lunenfeld will deliver the 139th Faculty Research Lecture, in recognition of his extraordinary contributions to scholarship and creative inquiry at UCLA. A media theorist turned urban storyteller, Lunenfeld will weave his research on the cultural impact of artificial intelligence into a narrative about L.A.'s beguiling complexities in his talk, "Future Street: Los Angeles in the Era of Artificial Intelligence."
A special note to parents of current students: You are invited to join us for Bruin Family Day Lunch with the Deans on Friday, Nov. 7. This is a wonderful opportunity to connect with school faculty and leadership, meet other families, and learn more about the exciting work happening across our school. We look forward to welcoming you.
I hope to see many of you at one or more of these events. They are reminders of why we do this work and provide opportunities to gather, reflect, and be inspired by what we create together.
As we move into this new year, I remain grateful to be in community with all of you. Thank you for showing up, for supporting one another, and for continuing to carry this work forward.
Be well,
Lionel Popkin
Interim Dean, UCLA School of the Arts and Architecture
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