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From the Dean

, Filed Under: From the Dean

Dean’s Insider: Celebrating Dance on the Forty Acres

Dear Friends,
 
This spring, we’re seeing so much incredible energy around dance on campus, from ambitious programming at Texas Performing Arts to engaging creative and scholarly research happening in the Department of Theatre and Dance.
 
This Saturday, Texas Performing Arts hosts Cullberg — Works by Deborah Hay, an internationally renowned choreographer based right here in Austin. Hay, who is recognized as a pivotal figure in the development of post-modern dance, was one of Texas Performing Arts’ artists-in-residence this year. Associate Professor of Dance Leah Cox will be moderating the talkbacks after each of the two performances on Saturday.
 
And our Dance students will perform new works by student and professional choreographers in their spring show EMERGE, opening March 2. Exploring themes of emergence, EMERGE seeks to reflect on history to imagine a way forward, elevating the inventiveness and interconnectivity of moving art forms. The program will also feature the return of the Haruka Weiser Commission, which will be choreographed by Ido Tadmore.
 
In research news, Associate Professor Rebecca Rossen received a National Endowment for the Humanities grant to support her research exploring dance about the Holocaust. Rossen is a dance historian, performance scholar and choreographer, and the grant supports her forthcoming monograph Moving Memories: Holocaust Representation in Contemporary Dance, the first monograph focused on dance about the Holocaust.
 
As part of my own Puerto Rican Arts Initiative, we’ll be bringing performance artists, including dancemakers, from Puerto Rico to visit campus as part of  Performance as Public Practice’s Fridays@2 speaker series.
 
And we’re just getting started. We have more exciting news brewing around dance in our college, so stay tuned!
 
Sincerely,
Ramón H. Rivera-Servera
Dean, College of Fine Arts

, Filed Under: From the Dean

Dean’s Insider: Gatherings to talk about our past, present and future impact

Dear Friends,
 
As our galleries and performance spaces have opened in full again, we’ve also begun to gather larger groups in-person this fall. In the College of Fine Arts, we had three significant gatherings last month that invited stakeholders together to think about our past, present and future. After two years of hybrid and virtual meetings, it was a joy to host a large group each week this past month.
 
Our Fine Arts Advisory Council arrived for our fall meeting in October, and we used it as an opportunity to engage our stakeholders on our college’s upcoming strategic planning process. We asked our members about what brought them to our college, what’s kept them engaged with the council through the years and what they dream about for the future of the practice, education and research in the arts.
 
The Performance as Public Practice program in the Department of Theatre and Dance marked its 20th anniversary this fall by inviting former faculty members and alumni who remain engaged and connected to the College of Fine Arts, even as their careers have taken them elsewhere. As the first Ph.D. recipient in the program myself, I was honored to be part of these festivities and to honor the achievements of this program with my colleagues and fellow alumni. Alongside our current faculty and students, we celebrated the incredible impact the program has advanced to this field.
 
We held our first Latinx Arts Summit in the college, as we convened UT faculty and alumni alongside distinguished stakeholders from across the country who are doing impactful work around Latinx arts locally, nationally and internationally. We had important conversations about the ways in which our college and UT have been so central to the advancement of Latinx arts and what we can to do to continue advancing such an impact, especially with UT’s status as a Hispanic-Serving Institution.
 
I’m so invigorated by these conversations. Each of these three gatherings included story sharing as participants assessed what we’ve achieved already and what we can do moving forward. One of the key attributes of the arts is capacity for convocation—creating common spaces for engagement and respectful debate. I look forward to continuing these important conversations as we launch our strategic planning process for the college and prepare to translate our shared values and aspirations for the transformational work of the arts into an actionable set of guiding principles for our collective work ahead.
 
Sincerely,
Ramón H. Rivera-Servera
Dean, College of Fine Arts

, Filed Under: From the Dean

Remembering Bob Freeman

Dear Friends,
 
I write today to share the news that former College of Fine Arts Dean Bob Freeman passed away on Oct. 18. Dean Freeman led the college from 2000 through 2007 and left a lasting legacy here. You can read more about his life and career here.
 
Please join me in extending our condolences to his family, friends and colleagues. Details are still pending for a memorial service, and we’ll share out more information once we receive it.
 
Sincerely,
Ramón H. Rivera-Servera
Dean, College of Fine Arts

, Filed Under: From the Dean

Welcoming new faculty members to the College of Fine Arts

Photo mosaic with headshots of 13 new faculty members in the College of Fine Arts
Dear Friends,

 

We’ve had a robust season of faculty recruiting and hiring this past year, and I’m excited to introduce our new cohort of career faculty members. This cohort represents a diverse array of cultural and scholarly backgrounds and expands research and creative practice opportunities across the college.

 

Please join me in extending a warm Texas welcome to all of these new colleagues.

 

Tasheka Arceneaux-Sutton, Associate Professor in the Department of Design
Arceneaux’s is the principal at Blacvoice Design, a studio specializing in branding, electronic media, identity, illustration, print, and publication design, for educational institutions, non-profit organizations, and small businesses. Her research focuses on discovering Black people omitted from the graphic design history canon, and she joins us from North Carolina State University.

 

David Arevalo, Assistant Professor in the Department Theatre and Dance
Arevalo is a costume maker, designer and visual artist. A graduate of the UT Department of Theatre and Dance, he joins us from Northwestern University, where he recently completed his M.F.A. He’s worked as a draper/tailor at the Santa Fe Opera, Cincinnati Playhouse in the Park, Fulton Theatre and Merrimack Repertory Theatre, among others, and his work has been featured in American Theatre magazine and in the book, Unbuttoned: The Art and Artists of Theatrical Costume Design. 

 

Andrew Augustin, Assistant Professor of Practice in the Department of Arts and Entertainment Technologies
Augustin is an award-winning 2D illustrator, game designer and the founder of Notion Games. His gaming portfolio includes designing the characters for The Sims 3 Pets video game, and he created his own line of video games, including Super Ubie Island 1 and Super Ubie Island 2, Up Up Ubie REMIX, Sheep Herder Nay and Team Notion. He’s currently working with Microsoft to bring Super Ubie Island to Xbox. Augustin was listed in Innovators of Gaming and Esports vol 1 (2022), Forbes Magazine’s 30 Under 30 class of 2015 and has been published in various magazines, including Pure Nintendo, Nintendo Force, Black Enterprise, Hollywood Reporter, Screen Rant and Advanced Photoshop magazine

 

Jacqueline “Jacky” Avila, Associate Professor in the Butler School of Music
Avila is a musicologist who specializes in film music studies, sound studies and the intersections of identity, tradition and modernity in the musical cultures and new media of Mexico, Latin America and the Latinx community in the United States. She joins us from The University of Tennessee, Knoxville. Her book, Cinesonidos: Film Music and National Identity in Mexico’s Época de Oro was published in 2019 by Oxford University Press’ Music and Media Series.

 

J.D. Burnett, Assistant Professor and Director of Choral Activities in the Butler School of Music
Burnett is a conductor, singer and educator, and he serves as the artistic director of the Orpheus Chamber Singers. As a professional choral singer, Burnett has performed and recorded with the Stillwater Chamber Singers, Cantare Houston, Fuma Sacra, Robert Shaw Festival Singers, Choir of Trinity Church Wall Street, Oregon Bach Festival Chorus, Santa Fe Desert Chorale and Conspirare. He joins us from the University of Georgia.

 

Michael Ray Charles, Professor in the Department of Design and Department of African and African Diaspora Studies
Charles is a contemporary American painter whose work explores historic African American stereotypes from the Antebellum South, appropriating images from advertising and pop culture to expose the underlying racism prevalent in contemporary culture. His work (Forever Free) Ideas, Languages and Conversations, was commissioned by Landmarks in 2015 and is on view in the Gordon-White Building. He joins us from the University of Houston.

 

C. Ondine Chavoya, Professor in the Department of Art and Art History
Chavoya is an art historian with a focus on Chicanx avant-garde art and performance, and he is a leading figure in the field of Latinx art history and visual culture. Chavoya is the author of numerous publications on Chicanx art, including experimental video and performance. His award-winning curatorial projects include Asco: Elite of the Obscure, A Retrospective, 1972–1987, the first museum retrospective to present the wide-ranging work of the performance and conceptual art group Asco with Rita Gonzalez, and Axis Mundo: Queer Networks in Chicano L.A. He joins us from Williams College.

 

DiMitri Higginbotham, Assistant Professor of Practice in the Department of Design
Higginbotham is an educator and human-centered design specialist with a background in music education and M.A. in Design and Innovation from Southern Methodist University. He joins us from Good Shepherd Episcopal School in Dallas, where he helped to incorporate maker education and design thinking into the school’s curriculum and facilitated design thinking sprints for the school’s board, faculty and staff as they reimagined collaborative spaces on campus. In his previous role as a senior teaching lab manager and program manager for the Caruth Institute for Engineering Education at Southern Methodist University, he managed a mobile makerspace, helped develop curriculum for the Lyle School Summer Engineering Camps and facilitated professional development opportunities around maker education and design thinking for teachers and school administrators.

 

Raquel Monroe, Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance and Associate Dean of Graduate Education and Academic Affairs in the College of Fine Arts
Monroe is an interdisciplinary performance scholar, artist, administrator and mother whose research interests include Black social dance, queer black feminisms, popular culture and the efficacy of collaboration to create social change. Monroe is a performer with Propelled Animals collective, and she recently received the 2022 Mid-Career Award, which recognizes leadership of mid-career scholars in the development of the dance studies field, from the Dance Studies Association. She joins the college from her most recent role at Columbia College Chicago, where she served as the co-director of diversity, equity and inclusion and a professor of dance.

 

Diego Rivera, Associate Professor and Director of Jazz Studies in the Butler School of Music
Rivera is a musician, composer, arranger and educator, known for his muscular tone and unique blend of straight-ahead jazz fused with music inspired by his Latino background and heritage. In addition to touring with his own ensemble, Rivera has also toured both nationally and internationally with Grammy Award-winning vocalist Kurt Elling, JUNO Award-winning Canadian Jazz Vocalist Sophie Milman and The Rodney Whitaker Quintet. He is a member of the The Ulysses Owens Jr. Big Band, the Jazz Orchestra @ The Dr. Phillips Center, The Gathering Orchestra and the SEIKO Summer Jazz Faculty. He’s performed with The Jazz @ Lincoln Center Orchestra, Wynton Marsalis, Ellis Marsalis, Christian McBride, Wycliffe Gordon, PRISM Saxophone Quartet, the Gerald Wilson Big Band and the Lincoln Center Afro-Latin Jazz Orchestra. He joins us from Michigan State University.

 

Vic Rodriguez Tang, Assistant Professor of Practice in the Department of Design
Rodriguez Tang is a Peruvian-Chinese designer and art director originally from Lima, Perú. Their current research focuses on queer design history and the effects of gendering design elements throughout the years, such as typefaces and colors, within the design and advertising industry. They served in the department as a lecturer last year, and join us in a career-track role after completing an M.F.A. from Vermont College of Fine Arts last spring.

 

Ivan Trevino, Assistant Professor of Practice in the Butler School of Music
Trevino is a percussionist and composer whose works have been performed on five continents in more than 25 countries. He’s won multiple awards in the Percussive Arts Society’s International Composition Contest and was recently the featured composer and performer on NPR’s Performance Today. Trevino’s newly commissioned works include an etude book for The Juilliard School and a wind symphony piece for The Eastman Wind Ensemble. He’s been serving as a lecturer in the Butler School and joins us in this new career-track role this fall.

 

Byron Wilson, Associate Professor of Practice in the Department of Design
Wilson is the CEO & founder of Empty Set, a design consultancy for leading health care organizations and R&D labs. He brings broad and deep multidisciplinary experience from both academic and professional project work within the scope of technology-based research and development through the creation of value from a strategic design perspective. He was the first design hire by Southern California Permanente Medical Group, where he contributed to regional and national efforts as the senior manager of innovation in Southern California. He joins us from the ArtCenter College of Design.

 

We also have many part-time faculty members joining us this year and supporting our teaching needs in the college in all of our departments. I hope you’ll make them all feel at home here as they join the COFA family.

 

Sincerely,
Ramón H. Rivera-Servera
Dean, College of Fine Arts

, Filed Under: From the Dean

Dean’s Insider: Updating and renovating our spaces
Dear Friends,

I recently celebrated my one-year anniversary as dean of the College of Fine Arts, and as I look ahead, I couldn’t be more excited about what we’re building, both physically and programmatically.

As I walked through our buildings recently, signs of progress are everywhere. Over the summer, we’ve been refurbishing three heavily used Art History classrooms, installing new instrument storage lockers in the Butler School of Music and planning for the Buckman Center, a new immersive media lab set to open next fall.

In the past year, we completed major renovation projects of our photography lab facilities, and the Department of Design moved into a newly renovated Anna Hiss Gymnasium with 10,000 square feet of studio classrooms, meeting spaces and shared faculty offices. Texas Performing Arts also made significant enhancements to Bass Concert Hall while their stages were dark during the pandemic, and returning audiences last year enjoyed improved seating and sightlines.

We still have much to do regarding our facilities, but the excitement around these projects is palpable in our community. As an alumnus of the college, I have great love for the old bones of our buildings, and I’m so proud to see these new projects come to fruition to support our teaching and learning mission in the college.

Sincerely,
Ramón H. Rivera-Servera
Dean, College of Fine Arts

, Filed Under: From the Dean

Dean’s Insider: Studying our past, while creating new futures

Dear Friends,

As I near my one-year anniversary as dean of the College of Fine Arts, I’ve had the pleasure of learning about the breadth and depth of research in our college. I’ve been especially impressed with the historical range of research, from the ancient Roman empire and pre-Columbian Mesoamerica to some of the pioneering work we see at the intersection of arts and technologies today.

The arts archive and embody traditions we continue to mine, uphold and reinvent, as well as the new forms that will express our imagination into the future. While we preserve and uphold our history and traditional repertoires, our faculty are also exploring new forms in transmedia and performance, advancing experimentation and innovation in music composition and developing new theatre and dance works. In doing so, they push both at the formal conventions of each medium represented in the college and expand the notion of creativity at the core of an arts education. We look to the past, as we constantly move forward.

We employ cutting-edge technologies to uncover new insights and animate ancient history. The use of LIDAR technologies has helped uncover whole new settlements obscured by thick jungle cover for centuries in Central America. We create 3-D models of excavated Roman villas buried by a volcano eruption in 79 AD. Our faculty conduct archival research for new insights that inform how we think about our disciplines and how to move our practices forward.

And our faculty and students are constantly exploring new ways to adapt new technologies to execute their creative visions. From designing new experiences for virtual and augmented reality to incorporating projection design into an opera set, our community is pushing the boundaries of what technology can do to create narratives.

Our college’s greatest strengths are our scale, size and interdisciplinarity, and I’ve been impressed by the dynamism of our college and its temporal span between the past, present and future. I’m excited to see what’s next as we engage with history and make history for our fields.

Sincerely,
Ramón H. Rivera-Servera
Dean, College of Fine Arts

, Filed Under: From the Dean

Dean’s Insider: Highlighting our faculty members’ global impact

Dear Friends,

We’ve all heard the University’s tagline, “What starts here changes the world.” And I wanted to take a moment to highlight the global impact of our faculty’s research and creative work in this issue.

Our students are learning from scholars, artists, curators and performers whose work is reaching global audiences and advancing conversations in their respective disciplines around the world. Below are just a few examples that I’m proud to share from the College of Fine Arts.

  • Design Associate Professor Kate Catterall recently returned from Belfast, Ireland after staging her project “Drawing the Ring of Steel” at Belfast Festival of Ideas and Politics. The project, which drew international press in The Irish News and ITV, facilitated public recollection of the Troubles by recreating the “Ring of Steel,” a security cordon that once encircled Belfast City center, protecting, while rendering suspect, an entire population.
  • Associate Professor of Theatre Katie Dawson continues to train educators all over the world in the use of drama-based pedagogy. Originally developed in Central Texas schools, she has brought her innovative approach to creative teaching to multi-year projects in Australia and Taiwan, and to extended research partnerships with the U.S. Embassy System in Croatia, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Poland.
  • Studio Art Professor Beili Liu is currently on research leave in Norway as the 2021–2022 Fulbright Arctic Chair, one of Fulbright’s Distinguished Scholars programs, to support her project Dreams of the High North: Between Survival and Belonging. Liu was also just named a 2022 Andrew Carnegie Fellow for her project Dreams of the High North: Between Survival and Belonging, Sculptural Exploration of Environmental Challenges Facing the Circumpolar North. She’s been sharing stunning images of her time in Norway on her Instagram account this year, and I’m eager to see the work that emerges from this project.
  • Butler School of Music Professor Robin Moore recently received a faculty research seed grant from Texas Global to support a partnership with University of Guadalajara, Mexico to cultivate faculty teaching and research, offer students international cultural learning opportunities and strengthen the university’s regional and global connections.
  • The University of Texas at Austin was recently recognized as being a top producer of Fulbright Students. Twelve Longhorns received Fulbright awards this academic year, making the university No. 17 overall and No. 2 among public universities. Butler School of Music Associate Professor Sonia Seeman has served as UT Austin’s Fulbright Chair since 2018, helping shepherd the success of this dynamic global program for students.

And this list only scratches the surface of the many ways our faculty are engaging with and reaching worldwide audiences in their work. I’m so proud of the global impact of our faculty in the College of Fine Arts.

Sincerely,
Ramón H. Rivera-Servera
Dean, College of Fine Arts

, Filed Under: From the Dean

Dean’s Insider: UT’s What Starts Here capital campaign in the College of Fine Arts
Dear Friends,

Last week, the university launched the public phase of its comprehensive fundraising initiative entitled the What Starts Here capital campaign with the bold goal of raising $6 billion by 2026.

As many of you know, we’ve been in the “silent phase” of this fundraising campaign since 2016, and we are well on our way to meeting this audacious goal. The College of Fine Arts’ goal is to raise $150 million during the campaign, and thanks to your generous support and advocacy, we’ve already realized more than $113 million in new gifts.

These funds will help the college build resources to further its academic mission and increase its endowments. The college’s priorities for the campaign include:

  • Innovation in Research and Creative Practice
  • Student Support and College-to-Career Success for Artists and Creatives
  • New State of the Art Facilities and Renovations

How can you help us reach our goals? We’re grateful for your financial support, of course, but we also look to you for advocacy and connections. If you have a friend or know someone who might be interested in the excellent work happening in our college, please consider introducing us. Bring your friends to our exhibitions, performances and special events and talk about why you are engaged with the College of Fine Arts and why creatives are essential for our society, culture and economy.

I’m so grateful to our development team, led by Executive Director and Assistant Dean of Development Sondra Lomax, for their hard work in helping our college pursue our goals. We’re also incredibly grateful to the University Development Office for its focused commitment to supporting visual and performing arts and design at UT.

What starts here in the College of Fine Arts does indeed change the world, and I am gratified to be part of this community and to have an up-close look at the incredible impact of the work of our faculty, students and staff.  With your help during the What Starts Here campaign, we will build resources to secure the excellence of our programs for future generations of Fine Arts students.

Sincerely,
Dean Ramón H. Rivera-Servera

, Filed Under: From the Dean

Dean’s Insider: Celebrating our Doty Awards honorees for 2022

Dear Friends,

This past week, I had the great honor of gathering with many friends to celebrate the recipients of the College of Fine Arts’ 2022 Doty Awards. This was my first time participating in this event in the college, and I loved learning more about the incredible impact of the work of our recipients.

The E. William Doty Award, named for the founding dean of the College of Fine Arts, is the highest honor given by our college. This year, we honored the Still Water Foundation, which has long been a key supporter of Landmarks, the University’s public art program. With the continued generous support of the Foundation, Landmarks has become one of the most prestigious university public art collections in the country, inspiring students and scholars from disciplines across the Forty Acres.

We also honored two prolific and inspiring alumni in our college:

Arts executive, curator and designer Fairfax Dorn (B.F.A., Studio Art, 1997; B.A., Art History, 1998) received the E. William Doty Distinguished Alumna Award. Dorn is the co-founder of Ballroom Marfa, an internationally-recognized contemporary non-profit art space located in West Texas, where she served as the executive director until 2013.

Playwright and screenwriter Isaac Gómez (B.A., Theatre and Dance, 2013) received the E. William Doty Young Alumnus Award. Gómez grew up in El Paso, Texas/Ciudad Juárez, Mexico and is currently based in Chicago and Los Angeles. As a playwright, they are currently under commission with LCT3, Steppenwolf Theater Company, South Coast Repertory, Denver Center for the Performing Arts and IAMA Theatre Company. Gómez’s television credits include the Netflix Original Series Narcos: Mexico, among other exciting upcoming projects for AppleTV, Netflix and Paramount TV+.

Each of these recipients continues to do important work to support visual and performing arts and lift up new voices and tell new stories through art. We’re honored they’re part of our College of Fine Arts community, and I hope you’ll join me in sending warmest congratulations and gratitude to the Still Water Foundation, Fairfax Dorn and Isaac Gómez.

Sincerely,
Dean Ramón H. Rivera-Servera

, Filed Under: From the Dean

Dean’s Insider: Diving into latest issue of Aperture, new faculty books in the new year

Dear Friends,

As we launch into this new year, I’ve had a wonderful stack of reading on my nightstand that I wanted to share with you.

I was delighted to receive a copy of the winter issue of Aperture Magazine, which is the first issue ever devoted entirely to Latinx photography. This rich issue was guest edited by UT alumna Pilar Tompkins Rivas, who is also the chief curator and deputy director of curatorial and collections at the Lucas Museum of Narrative Art.

I also have been enjoying enlightening new publications by our College of Fine Arts faculty members:

  • Professors Teresa Hubbard and Alexander Birchler recently published Flora Redux (Radius Books, 2022), a richly illustrated book that chronicles their process of creating their acclaimed work, Flora. The book includes the transcript of the film installation, a visual chronology of Flora Mayo’s life and conversations with the artists.
  • Associate Professor Nassos Papalexandrou’s Bronze Monsters and the Cultures of Wonder: Griffin Cauldrons in the Preclassical Mediterraneanwas published by UT Press this fall. The book is an enlightening study of griffin cauldrons in the preclassical Mediterranean, uncovering the origins of illusionism in Greek art and exploring the social significance of a changing visual culture.
  • Associate Professor Luisa Nardini’s book Chants, Hypertext, Prosulas: Re-Texting the Proper of the Mass in Beneventan Manuscripts was published by Oxford Press this fall. The book provides a model for future studies of liturgical music and illustrates the interconnectedness of modern and ancient modes of human learning, teaching, and communicating.

This is just a small sampling of the great work our alumni and faculty members have been producing recently on the publication front. We will be featuring a full slate of publications for this academic year in our forthcoming issue of Arts Next.

Sincerely,
Dean Ramón H. Rivera-Servera
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