Reimagining the Arts
at Stanford

Over these past five years, we have had the good fortune to help shape and implement a cultural shift at Stanford, one that we hope will last and evolve further. In this report, we reflect upon the impact of our collective efforts through the Stanford Arts Initiative and the Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts (SiCa), and how this positions us as we go forward.

We began with a mandate to reimagine the role of the arts in a twenty-first-century Stanford education. This reimagining has taken us on a journey of institutional change and transformation, reaching students, faculty, alumni, and the community. The vision for the arts at Stanford continues to evolve as we enter the next phase of the Arts Initiative.

Since 2006, we have initiated a wide range of new programs designed to transform Stanford's arts culture and community. Over the past five years, the Arts Initiative and SiCa have created six endowed faculty positions and eighteen graduate fellowships, sponsored hundreds of visiting artists, and facilitated arts experiences throughout campus. SiCa has granted over $1 million...

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Jonathan Berger
The Denning Family Provostial Professor
The William R. and Gretchen B. Kimball Fellow in Undergraduate Education

Bryan Wolf
The Jeanette and William Hayden Jones Professor in American Art and Culture, and by courtesy, English

(Denning Family Co-Directors of the Stanford Arts Initiative and the Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts (SiCa), 2005–2011)

Visiting Artist Shona Kitchen taught the class Design for Robots during the 2010-2011 year.

Strengthening Departments

At the core of the Arts Initiative is a commitment to strengthening Stanford's arts departments and programs. The Initiative has created six endowed faculty positions and eighteen graduate fellowships, greatly increasing the number of arts faculty and the amount of support available to arts graduate students. In addition, funds raised by the Initiative support programs that enable new forms of research, catalyze curricular innovation, and integrate arts programming into the classroom experience.

Since 2006, SiCa has provided over $1 million in grants to faculty in more than forty departments in seven schools. Thanks to these grants, over 2,000 students per year experience the arts as part of their residential and classroom life at Stanford. These programs ensure that the arts departments are able to expand their reach and arts projects take place in every sector of the university.

Nancy J. Troy arrived from the University of Southern California in fall 2010 to become chair of the Department of Art and Art History. Troy holds the Victoria and Roger Sant Professorship in Art, one of six new endowed faculty positions raised by the Arts Initiative.

Multimedia presentation at Music and the Brain 2011 by Anthony Wagner, director of the Stanford Memory Laboratory

The American Enlightenment: Treasures from the Stanford University Libraries curated by Caroline Winterer, professor of American History, brought together visual materials and historical expertise.

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Bridging Disciplines

Through innovative events and programming grants, the Arts Initiative has enabled faculty and students to cross traditional disciplinary boundaries in their teaching, artistic practice, and research. SiCa has forged connections across departments, sponsoring more than one hundred multidisciplinary projects and programs across the university.

In 2009, SiCa introduced the first campus-wide arts programming theme: Art + Invention. Subsequent themes — Memory and Terra Nova — have brought campus partners together into new forms of collaboration, drawing on Stanford's strengths in multidisciplinary engagement.

Re- was a collaborative dance piece created by choreographers Ali McKeon and Katherine Disenhof, class of 2011.

Fostering Student Creativity

Stanford students have more opportunities to explore and create than ever before, thanks to the Arts Initiative. New grant programs, exhibition spaces, internship opportunities, and student arts organizations are making the arts a fundamental part of the Stanford student experience and giving students many opportunities to dive deeply into their own artistic practice and showcase their works across campus.

Through the Arts Intensive program, begun in 2009, students spend three weeks before the start of fall quarter in an intensive for-credit study of a chosen artistic discipline.

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During Admit Weekend and New Student Orientation, freshmen now engage in arts activities, events, and learn about how to pursue the arts further during their Stanford career.

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SiCa's new Your Art Here Program enables students to display their art in student-run gallery spaces across campus.

Bing Concert Hall under construction

New Arts Facilities

Over the past several years, the Initiative has made great strides toward creating new and improved spaces for the arts to thrive at Stanford. The Bing Concert Hall, an 844-seat state-of-the-art performance facility, is under construction and scheduled to open in January 2013. Planning is well underway for the McMurtry Building, a new home for the Department of Art and Art History, to be designed by renowned architects Diller Scofidio + Renfro in collaboration with Boora Associates. In June 2011, Stanford announced the gift of the core of the Anderson Collection, one of the foremost collections of post–World War II American art, which will be housed in a new dedicated building adjacent to the Cantor Arts Center. These facilities will anchor an Arts District at the entrance to campus, showcasing Stanford's commitment to the arts and creating a space for interaction and exchange among arts programs.

Giving to the Arts

The Arts Initiative and its supporters have significantly transformed the arts at Stanford over the course of The Stanford Challenge campaign. Exceptional new facilities taking shape in Stanford's Arts District, new interdisciplinary faculty appointments spanning the arts and humanities, and innovative courses and programs are integrating the arts more deeply into the Stanford experience. The next phase of the Initiative will focus on bold investments in the student experience, museum collections, and programming in cutting-edge facilities.

Ongoing priorities include:

• Anderson Collection at Stanford University
• McMurtry Building
• Cantor Arts Center
• Support for Arts Programs
• Bing Concert Hall Program and Instrument Funds

For giving opportunities, please see
http://thestanfordchallenge.stanford.edu

Looking Forward

The Arts Initiative can look back on its first five years as a period of significant progress in enhancing the arts at Stanford. The construction of the Bing Concert Hall (scheduled to open January 2013), the planning underway for the McMurtry Building for the Department of Art and Art History, and the gift of the core of the Anderson Collection – one of the preeminent collections of post–World War II American Art – constitute giant steps toward making the arts an integral part of university life.

All four of the areas prioritized for development have seen transformative change and remain vital points of focus going forward: building world-class facilities, enriching student life, strengthening core arts departments with additional faculty and more student fellowships, and creating new programs.

SiCa's objectives will include: expanding the role of the arts in the undergraduate curriculum; furthering Stanford's traditionally strong connections among practice, theory, and history; and collective planning with new partners, such as Residential Education, Athletics, and Medicine. As we move forward we will also take stock: work has begun on a retrospective of the arts on campus since the university's founding. Building on a great lineage and the new momentum of the Arts Initiative, the future of the arts at Stanford is exciting indeed.

Stephen Hinton
The Denning Family Director of the Stanford Institute for Creativity and the Arts (SiCa)
Avalon Foundation Professor in the Humanities