Spring Message from Dean Brett Steele
‘What’s the big idea?’
‘What’s the big idea?’
This is the kind of thing a precocious child might say…or a diligent artist stepping back for a moment to assess a work…or, after a surprisingly wet winter and a busy quarter, the kind of question I imagine echoing throughout campus as we are reminded of larger imperatives.
The big idea has been very present for me of late.
Over the last several weeks, I’ve been invited to remember just how significant the work of our school is.
At Imagine UCLA Arts, the event at which we welcomed recently admitted students and their families, I was reminded of the dreams of our students and the profound responsibility that we all have as students, alumni, faculty, and staff—and as artists and creative practitioners—to the next generation. You can’t help but be inspired by their hard work and the hopes they have for their ideas and their futures in the arts.
On a recent Friday evening, I was honored to deliver welcome remarks for Call To Action | UCLA: Connecting Art & Law for Liberation, the first festival of its kind celebrating collaborations at the intersection of art and law seeking to end mass incarceration. Sometimes, it takes those beyond our disciplines to remind us of the significance of our own. Conceived by students and colleagues from the UCLA School of Law, the festival convened an amazing group of scholars, artists, activists, and colleagues to celebrate and explore the potential of the arts—their ability to bring justice to the underserved, and the powerful ways in which they create community at the intersection of social justice and arts activism. These are big, and necessary, ideas. I was struck by how both art and law, when untethered to a deeper purpose, risk becoming unmoored. What they share is the ability to shape, embolden, and challenge our society.
Then, this past Tuesday, across town, we celebrated another important development for the arts at UCLA: the soon to be completed Margo Leavin Graduate Art Studios, which, as a result of a visionary gift from Margo Leavin and the excellent work of architects Johnston Marklee, has already received numerous accolades. The thoughtfully crafted building—an exemplar of environmental sustainability—quite literally, concretizes UCLA Arts’ footprint beyond the 420 acres of campus and out into the city. Located in the heart of the Culver City arts district, the renovated graduate art studios will provide highly functional space thoughtfully designed to reflect the curriculum and identity of the program it serves. Building on a century long legacy in which the arts at UCLA have contributed to the city’s cultural and artistic development, the new building will provide a more robust platform for the school’s interconnectedness with the surrounding community and cultural landscape. How edifying it is to witness the creation of a space that will house so many creations.
An in just a few weeks, on May 18th, I invite you all to join the Chancellor and our entire community as we kick off a yearlong celebration of UCLA’s centennial. I know it will be a moment to commemorate the achievements of the past, but perhaps even more importantly, a moment that will inspire us to dream about the next hundred years—about the work still left to be done, about a future we can only begin to imagine, about the generations to come who will shape our campus, our city, and our artistic forms.
So many big ideas.
I hope, in the mad dash to finish the academic year, to complete the work at hand, that you will take a moment to step back and consider the broader landscape. Whether, like our incoming students, it’s a question of considering your own personal journey or dreams; or drawing inspiration from our colleagues in the School of Law, it’s a call to a deeper action, to use your skills and your form to help improve our society; or, in celebration of a new home or a new century, you imagine creating spaces that foster the future—I hope you’ll take a minute, like that precocious child to ask “What’s the big idea?” And, having asked it, I hope you’ll share your answers with the world.
Here’s to the big ideas and the promise of Spring.
Stay engaged. Use #UCLAarts to stay connected.
