THE ARTS CALL US BOTH INTO AND OUT OF OURSELVES: INVITING US TO RIGOROUSLY INVESTIGATE OUR MOST FOUNDATIONAL AND MOST URGENT QUESTIONS, AND IMAGINE NEW FUTURES. Courses focus on art-making and artistic practice, as well as the history, theory and criticism of the artform. More than 150 different courses are offered each year at introductory through advanced levels. Over a quarter of undergraduates enroll in Lewis Center courses each year and are encouraged to explore, take risks, experiment, push boundaries, and work in interdisciplinary ways. Many aspiring artists choose Princeton over art schools or conservatories in order to fuse creative pursuits with a broader exploration of the world. You can earn a minor while majoring in fields as varied as economics and evolutionary biology, computer science and comparative literature, physics and philosophy. Students can major in Visual Arts through a collaboration with the Department of Art and Archaeology. Independent majors are also possible. Your academic studies will inform your artistic practice and vice versa. Princeton alumni are everywhere you look in the arts—on screen, stage and page, in galleries and museums, behind the camera and curtain, and in the roles of producer, curator, choreographer, and much more. Many others have brought their rich experiences and valuable skills learned through the arts into a broad range of professions. Join them!
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arts.princeton.edu | Follow us at @princetonarts Judith Hamera, Chair Marion Friedman Young, Executive Director
L E W I S C E N T E R F O R T HE A RT S Photos by: Zohar Lavi-Hasson, Thomas Hedges, Larry Levanti, Zayvinn Lin, Jon Sweeney, Frank Wojciechowski
PRINCETON IN THE SERVICE OF THE IMAGINATION
ARTS.PRINCETON.EDU
W H Y S T U D Y T H E A R T S AT P R I N C E T O N ? The Lewis Center for the Arts positions the arts as a cornerstone of academic life at Princeton, offering courses and minors in Creative Writing, Dance, Theater & Music Theater, and Visual Arts. The Princeton Atelier hosts one-time and one-of-a-kind interdisciplinary courses. Music courses are offered through the Department of Music, a vital Lewis Center partner. At the Lewis Center you have the extraordinary opportunity to study and create with some of the best artists and scholars working today, including winners of MacArthur “Genius” Fellowships, Pulitzer Prizes, Tony Awards, Guggenheim Fellowships, National Book Awards, Drama Desk Awards, and Bessie Awards. Cutting-edge emerging artists, diverse resident fellows, and renowned guests offer workshops, classes, performances, lectures, readings, screenings and exhibitions. Princeton’s distinctive commitment to undergraduate education means that the artists on faculty are abundantly accessible to you in small workshops as teachers and mentors.
MISSION S TAT E M E N T At the Lewis Center for the Arts, we believe that art arises out of questions. Art, on a campus like Princeton’s, is so much more than an “outlet” for expressing what one already knows and feels, or an “escape hatch” for blowing off steam built up by more rigorous kinds of work. Our classes and minors in Dance, Creative Writing, Theater & Music Theater, Visual Arts and in the interdisciplinary Princeton Atelier operate on the principle that rigorous artistic practice is a form of research, innovation, discovery and intervention. Like scholarship of any kind, rigorous artistic practice is a way of interrogating that which is accepted or understood in an attempt to break into the territory of the unknown or under-explored. Through their individual creative work, Lewis Center students investigate questions about themselves, others, and the events and systems that affect us all—systems like geography, politics, gender, race, the economy, the environment, and of course the wide realm of human choice and activity. This is fundamental to the formation of artists. It is also fundamental to the formation of alert, compassionate, creative, resourceful, and active rather than passive people. The Lewis Center is committed to being an anti-racist space. We endeavor to frequently reappraise and redouble our efforts toward this goal. Our commitment to diversity and inclusion is not nominal or symbolic, but rather action-based. Our faculty, classes, public programs, co-curricular offerings and our engagement with the community beyond Princeton reflect these values.
CREATIVE WRITING
Students in the Program in Creative Writing have an unrivaled opportunity to work intensively in small fiction, poetry, screenwriting, and translation workshop classes with some of the most respected writers working today, including Katie Farris, Aleksandar Hemon, A.M. Homes, Ilya Kaminsky, Jamil Kochai, Yiyun Li, Joyce Carol Oates, Patricia Smith, Lloyd Suh, and Kirstin Valdez Quade. Past visiting faculty have included screenwriter Susanna Styron, novelist and essayist Garth Greenwell, novelist and translator Idra Novey, and poets Marilyn Chin, Tyehimba Jess, Yusef Komunyakaa, Kathleen Ossip, Rowan Ricardo Phillips, Nicole Sealey, and Monica Youn. Students pursuing the Creative Writing minor work individually with a member of the faculty to write a novel, a screenplay, or a collection of short stories, poems, or translations as their creative thesis.
ANSWER QUESTIONS BY MOVING. – SUSAN MARSHALL Director of the Program in Dance
CREATIVE WRITING IS A WAY TO INVESTIGATE BOTH MEANING AND TERRAINS OF LIFE WITH MUSIC, IMAGERY, AND LANGUAGE THAT INSPIRES AND DEEPENS OUR UNDERSTANDING OF OUR TIME, AND OURSELVES. – ILYA KAMINSKY Director of the Program in Creative Writing
DANCE
The Program in Dance familiarizes students with creative, performative, and analytical approaches to dance through exposure to professional choreographers, dancers, critics, and scholars. The program provides advanced courses for the pre-professional dancer and introductory courses for students who have never danced. The creation of original work, both choreographic and written, is emphasized alongside rigorous technical training. The program supports multiple performance opportunities each year, ranging from full professional productions with choreography by faculty, guests, and students to sitespecific interdisciplinary thesis projects and independent experimental work. Students can choose to minor in dance.
THEATER + MUSIC THEATER
A GREAT LIBERAL ARTS EDUCATION IS THE BEST POSSIBLE TRAINING FOR A LIFE IN THE THEATER. A CLASS IN THEATER IS A WONDERFUL TRAINING FOR LIFE. – JANE COX Director of the Program in Theater The Program in Theater & Music Theater invites aspiring and curious theater makers and scholars to join us in investigation and collaboration. Our courses, which are open to all students, include writing, performancemaking, directing, music directing, design, community engaged theater, dramaturgy, performance theory, theater and music theater history, and criticism. We offer an innovative and student-initiated season of theatrical explorations in which all students can participate. Core faculty artists and scholars, professional staff, and guest artists and scholars collaborate with students on our season, as well as teach and lead workshops, co-curricular classes, musical ensembles, community engagement opportunities, and public conversations. We welcome all undergraduates interested in exploring theater and music theater, with or without previous experience. Students in our minor program come from the full range of majors the University has to offer. offe
VISUAL ARTS & FILM The Program in Visual Arts offers courses in painting, drawing, graphic design, photography, animation, film/video, and sculpture, and provides students with extensive contact with an accomplished faculty and access to technical, analog, and digital labs including darkrooms, ceramics facilities, welding and mold-making areas, a letterpress studio, film editing bays, and a theater for 35 mm and 16 mm film. Students can major in the Practice of Art through a collaboration with the Department of Art and Archaeology, or minor in Visual Arts. Seniors exhibit a body of work or screen a film as their creative independent work and, along with juniors, enjoy 24/7 access to shared and semiprivate studios.
MAKING, VIEWING, AND DISCUSSING ART BRINGS US TOGETHER AND OFFERS MODES OF CONNECTION— IT DEFINES US, REFLECTS ON WHERE WE’VE BEEN, AND IMAGINES WHERE WE MIGHT GO. – PAM LINS Interim Director of the Program in Visual Arts
PRINCETON ATELIER
WORK WITH WORLD-CLASS CREATORS IN AN INTIMATE SEMINAR DRIVEN BY YOUR IMAGINATION. – TINA CAMPT Director of the Princeton Atelier
The Princeton Atelier has been an incubator for artistic collaboration for over thirty years. Founded by Toni Morrison in 1994, it is a unique program with a legacy of cultivating exciting artistic projects that allow students to work with worldclass creators in an intimate, semesterlong seminar. Atelier courses are multidisciplinary learning opportunities that expose students to the combined creativity of a range of artistic combinations: painters teaching with musicians, writers teaming up with choreographers, theater designers collaborating with poets, or filmmakers creating projects with architects or engineers. The Atelier is driven by imagination and expertise. It is a platform that allows students to work alongside experienced practitioners in their creative process to shape an innovative work of art.