Winter Message from Dean Brett Steele
Greetings and best wishes to all as we begin a new year and a new decade.
For UCLA, 2020 marks the beginning of a new century. Much of the work of the past several years, as a school and as a university, has been about establishing the foundation for this next chapter.
How will we flourish in this new century?
Clearly this question brings with it many challenges—and questions—that we must address in our work, in our classrooms, and in our lives. How will we fuel the arts and our home city and its many communities in the face of changing times? What are our greatest priorities and how, as a school, do we best pursue these? How can we work to improve on our past?
This past December, UCLA concluded its seven-year Centennial Campaign, one of the most ambitious and successful fundraising efforts ever initiated by a U.S. public university. Publicly launched in May 2014, the campaign reached its $4.2 billion goal 18 months early, in June 2018.
Here at the School of the Arts and Architecture, we are grateful to all of our donors who helped us exceed our original Centennial Campaign goal of $140 million and raise $287 million, bringing us to 205% of goal. Your generosity has given us vital support for our great public arts units; academic programs; research; scholarships; our first endowed chair; a new state-of-the-art facility for our graduate art students; and the promise of continued creative reinvention for years to come.
We are fortunate as a university to build on the work and dedication of those who came before us. Together, in this 2019–20 year, we are celebrating UCLA’s remarkable first 100 years, and together we will continue to do the work that will extend the university’s mission, broaden its reach, and deepen its impact well into the next century.
As many of you know, this past fall we opened the doors of the new UCLA Margo Leavin Graduate Art Studios. In December, we welcomed the public in for the first time as our Department of Art celebrated its inaugural Open Studios in the new space. Open Studios was attended by nearly 1,000 friends, supporters, and collectors who came to see M.F.A. students’ work in progress and experience the new environment that Los Angeles-based architecture firm Johnston Marklee created for our students and faculty. Fueled by celebrated gallerist and UCLA alumna Margo Leavin’s visionary campaign gift in 2016, the new building is a dynamic presence in the architectural landscape and cultural fabric of Culver City that promises to help solidify Los Angeles as a global center for cultural and artistic expression with UCLA an essential part of its home city.
As we continue to embrace and expand our engagement with communities across the city, we look forward to broadening the reach and deepening the impact of our public venues. We start the new year well into the design process for another important project—the UCLA Nimoy Theater. Made possible by major gifts from actor, writer, and director Susan Bay Nimoy, as well as an anonymous donor, the Nimoy will become a vital, new, Westside public platform for emerging contemporary performing artists across all disciplines including UCLA students, faculty, recent alumni, independent practitioners throughout Los Angeles, and national and international visiting artists. Public programming at the Nimoy will commence in 2022.
Together with the Hammer Museum’s multi-year project to renovate, expand, and transform its own public spaces, these new venues provide an accessible gateway to the powerful work that our public arts presenters bring to larger communities. These additions to our campus, slated to complete over the next few years, will allow us to share more of our work with the city and our campus with the world.
And the world is truly our canvas and within our reach. As I write, the Fowler Museum’s much lauded exhibition, Striking Iron: The Art of African Blacksmiths, is on view more than 5,600 miles away at the musée du quai Branly-Jacques Chirac in Paris. Prior to travelling to France, Striking Iron had travelled from Los Angeles to Washington D.C. where it was on view at the Smithsonian Institution’s National Museum of African Art in Washington D.C from April–October 2019.
This is work that began here in our backyard, on campus, like any one of the more than 200 public events presented by our academic departments and public venues this winter. I hope you will make time this spring to attend at least one of these events. As one of Southern California’s largest arts presenters, we provide opportunities for audiences to engage with work and ideas produced by emerging and established artists, designers, architects, dancers, writers, musicians, activists, scholars, and cultural critics.
These new facilities, capital campaigns, and public events are a testament to the work of every faculty, student, staff, and alum who has dedicated their efforts to honoring and extending the school’s reputation.
But there is yet more work to be done.
In light of these and other exciting developments, my office is initiating a formal Strategic Review of the School of the Arts and Architecture in 2020. This rigorous and comprehensive review of all of our academic, administrative, and public initiatives will help us hone our mission and sharpen our resolve as we identify the priorities and goals that will direct the future of the school as we enter a new decade—and a new century for the arts at UCLA. The process will be highly collaborative involving our faculty, staff, and students; and will also seek input from our extraordinary community of alumni, donors, and friends—both internal and external to campus. I am especially grateful to Assistant Dean Michael Chung, who is leading this initiative, and to those of you who have already volunteered to serve on a strategic review committee—your collective generosity of time and commitment to helping shape the future of the arts at UCLA is essential and appreciated.
I hope that as we all return to our work on campus and in the arts that we can celebrate and find inspiration in the achievements of the past and the promise of the future.
Wishing you all a productive quarter and a happy new year,
Brett
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