January 26, 2023, Filed Under: From the DeanDean’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
January 26, 2023, Filed Under: Council BusinessSpring 2023 Nominations Dear Council Members, We are looking forward to a fantastic Spring semester with you, starting with nominations for new member to join the Fine Arts Advisory Council in Fall 2023. If you have friends or colleagues that would be interested in supporting the College of Fine Arts as a member of our council, please nominate them by Friday, March 10th. To gauge interest, please share the Fine Arts Advisory Council Website, including the member responsibilities page, with prospective new members. This year, we have moved to a completely digital nomination process. You can find the online nomination form here, which can be filled out either by the nominator or the nominee. Once the form is completed, I will reach out to both the nominee and nominator(s) to confirm. Nominations will be reviewed by the Nominating Committee, and a slate of approved nominees will be put to a vote by the full council via email before the end of April. Please let me know if you have questions about nominations or any other council business. As always, thank you for all you do for the College of Fine Arts! Warmly, Lauren Cunningham Assistant Director of Development
November 30, 2022, Filed Under: From the DeanDean’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
November 11, 2022, Filed Under: From the ChairSave the Date: Spring Meeting in Santa Fe, March 30 – April 1, 2023 Dear Advisory Council and Parents Council members, We are looking so forward to the COFA Advisory Council meeting in Santa Fe, New Mexico this spring and are hopeful you can join us. In place of our traditional spring meetings across Texas, we are delighted to invite you to three days of tours, social events, and of course, a brief meeting in this dynamic cultural community, one that shares many supporters in common with our college. Below is preliminary information so you can begin your plans. We will have the full itinerary of activities in January, but wanted to give you an idea of the wonderful activities we are planning. Tentative Schedule Thursday, March 30 Evening Reception at La Fonda on the Plaza Friday, March 31 Coffee and Business Meeting at La Fonda on the Plaza Lunch on your own Optional tours Evening reception at a private home Saturday, April 1 Optional tours Lunch or Evening Reception at a private home Accommodations We have a group rate at La Fonda On the Plaza. 100 E. San Francisco Street, Santa Fe, NM 87501 Use this link to reserve your room now. The block includes several different categories of rooms for you to choose from, including rooms in the newly renovated boutique part of the hotel, The Terrace Inn. Please contact the hotel directly if you plan to arrive prior to March 30 and/or stay longer than April 2. You can find the full block information including pricing and parking here. Additional Information Guests are responsible for their own air and ground travel arrangements. Flights are available into Santa Fe airport via American Airlines or United Airlines. Flights are available to Albuquerque airport via Southwest Airlines and many more. It is a one hour drive from Albuquerque to Santa Fe. Rental cars, Uber or pre-arranged transportation services are available. If you have any questions, please reach out to Assistant Director of Development Lauren Cunningham at lauren.cunningham@austin.utexas.edu. In January we will be sending out more details, suggestions for meals and sight-seeing that are not included as well as information how to register for activities. Stay tuned, but please go ahead and book your hotel and flights soon! Warm Regards, Caroline Schupbach Chair
October 24, 2022, Filed Under: From the DeanRemembering 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
October 21, 2022, Filed Under: From the Executive DirectorFall 2022 Meeting Recap Dear Friends, On behalf of Dean Rivera-Servera and the entire College of Fine Arts, thank you to all who joined us at the 2022 Fine Arts Advisory Council Fall Meeting on October 13-14! We appreciate your attendance to celebrate the various achievements of the college over the past year, engage in the lively round-table discussions, hear about our outstanding fundraising success, and listen to the dean’s report on new faculty hires and new community projects. Additional thanks to Provost Sharon Wood and our other inspiring presenters on Friday: Nathan Langfitt, Director of Career Services; Kate Dawson, Associate Professor in the Department of Theatre and Dance; and the guest performers from the Butler Opera Center. We are especially grateful to Megan and Ryan Zafereo for hosting us in their lovely home for our Thursday evening reception, and the performers, Yebeen Seo and Ellie Sievers, from the violin studio of Professor Brian Lewis. You can access copies of the meeting handouts here. Please watch your email for information on upcoming events and save the date for our 2023 Spring Meeting in Santa Fe, New Mexico, March 30-April 1. Thank you again for all you do for the College of Fine Arts! Warm Regards, Sondra Lomax Executive Director of Director of Development
October 14, 2022, Filed Under: Development UpdatesFall 2022 Development Report Sondra Lomax Executive Director and Assistant Dean for Development As we move into the new academic year with less threat from COVID-19, the College of Fine Arts continues to raise the bar on excellence in 21st century arts education. To make this possible, we have increased momentum in our fundraising operation with a boost from the public launch of the UT-wide “What Starts Here” capital campaign in March 2022 and with important help from members of our Advisory Council. For academic year 2021-2022, the College of Fine Arts received over $44.8 million in gifts and pledges. This accomplishment is the result of dedicated efforts by Advisory Council members, chairs and directors, development staff, alumni, and friends. To each of you, I extend my heartfelt thanks on behalf of the College of Fine Arts and its students. Most of this $44.8 million is restricted, meaning that funds are designated to specific endowments or purposes. Some are planned gifts that will provide us with transformational funding in the future. But all of these gifts share a common bond: they help the college in its pursuit of excellence so that we can continue to provide the best arts education and creative research opportunities for our students. Last year’s success was a milestone, heralding the second-largest fundraising total in the history of the college. The largest fundraising year was over $55 million in 2008 with the generous naming gift for the music school by Ernest and Sarah Butler. This year’s fundraising is off to a great start: Since September 1, 2022, the college has raised over $14.9 million! Our goal for this fiscal year is $15 million, and we are well on our way to exceeding that goal. With your help, we will make it another banner year! Continue Reading Fall 2022 Development Report
October 12, 2022, Filed Under: From the DeanWelcoming new faculty members to 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
August 24, 2022, Filed Under: From the DeanDean’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
August 18, 2022, Filed Under: From the Executive Director2022 Fall Meeting Registration Dear Friends, We are so excited welcome you to campus for the 2022 Advisory Council Fall Meeting on October 13-14! Please register online at this link so we know to expect you. Please see the schedule of events below to help determine your travel plans, as well as a link to reserve a room at the AT&T Hotel and Conference Center on campus at a special group rate. If you have any questions, please contact Assistant Director of Development Lauren Cunningham at lauren.cunningham@austin.utexas.edu. I look forward to seeing you this fall! Warm regards, Sondra Lomax Executive Director of Development SCHEDULE OF EVENTS THURSDAY, OCTOBER 13 Evening Reception 6:30 – 8 PM Home of Megan Zafereo 11 Niles Road, Austin, TX 78703. All members and guests are invited to an evening reception to visit with fellow council members and College of Fine Arts leadership.FRIDAY, OCTOBER 14 Breakfast and Conversation 8:30 – 9 AM University of Texas Club, President’s Room (6th Floor)* Gather prior to the business meeting for coffee, breakfast, and conversation with fellow council members and college leadership.Business Meeting and Luncheon 9 AM – 2 PM University of Texas Club, President’s Room (6th Floor)* Featuring faculty presentations, student performances, a development update from Sondra Lomax, and Dean Rivera-Servera’s state of the college address.*Complimentary parking provided in the Manor garage. If you require local accommodations, we have a limited block of hotel rooms at the AT&T Hotel and Conference Center on campus. Click the link below to reserve your room. Reserve your room now
