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, Filed Under: Development Updates

Fall 2021 Development Report

Sondra Lomax
Executive Director and Assistant Dean for Development

As we move into the new academic year and under new leadership, the College of Fine Arts continues to raise the bar on excellence in 21st century arts education. To make this possible, we have maintained a robust fundraising operation during the pandemic with great help from members of our Advisory Council.

For academic year 2020-2021, the College of Fine Arts received over $12 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 students, faculty, and staff.

Most of this $12 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.

And this year’s fundraising is off to a great start: Since September 1, 2021, the college has raised over $9.3 million! Our goal for this fiscal year is $15 million, and we are well on our way to achieving, if not, exceeding that goal. With your help, we will make it a banner year!

Continue Reading Fall 2021 Development Report

, Filed Under: From the Dean

Dean’s Insider: Life has returned to our stages and galleries

Dear Friends,

Our students, faculty and staff are back on campus, and we are returning to fully in-person performances and programming for the first time in more than a year.

I saw my first live performance in the Butler School of Music with the Miró Quartet a couple of weeks ago, and they were absolutely fantastic. Not only are they technically impressive musicians, but they’re terrific ambassadors for classical music. The ensemble shared context and narrative around each work they performed, both educating and connecting with their audience. The quartet remained fully masked for the performance, an act of generosity to the audience members who came to see them perform.

The Visual Arts Center opened three new shows for the fall, including Carolina Caycedo and David de Rozas: The Blessings of the Mystery. We’re proud to have the premiere of this exhibition at the University of Texas before it travels on to Ballroom Marfa and the University of Texas at El Paso.

This week, the Department of Theatre and Dance kicks off its new season with their first in-person show: Sonnets for an Old Century, and Texas Performing Arts kicks off its 40th anniversary season with Ballet Hispánico on Oct. 30.

We’re excited to welcome audiences back safely into our spaces to experience incredible work on our stages and in our galleries. I hope to see you here soon.

Sincerely,
Dean Ramón H. Rivera-Servera

, Filed Under: From the Executive Director

Remembering Kirby Attwell

Dear Friends,

I am writing with the sad news that Kirby Attwell of Houston, a member of our Advisory Council since 2014, passed away on July 6, 2021 at the age of 86.

Kirby lived a long and full life, which you can read about here. A UT graduate (BA-Economics, ’57), his passions in the College of Fine Arts included the School of Design and Creative Technologies and Landmarks.

An early supporter of SDCT and the growth opportunities emerging technologies could provide to the creative economy, Kirby made a gift in 2017 to fund a visiting artists residency program in the newly-created Foundry makerspace in the Fine Arts Library.

In the past year, Kirby was a regular attendee of our virtual meetings, often asking thoughtful questions about our current programs and plans for the future. We could not be more grateful to Kirby and his family for their support of the college. He will be dearly missed. 

Sincerely,
Sondra Lomax signature
Sondra Lomax
Executive Director of Development

, Filed Under: From the Dean

Dean’s Insider: Introducing the new College of Fine Arts dean
Dear Friends,

I’m Ramón H. Rivera-Servera, and today I take the reins as the new dean in the College of Fine Arts. I wanted to share this video message to introduce myself.

I am both excited and honored to join the college at a time when its commitment to excellence has never been greater, thanks to your dedicated support and to the leadership of Doug Dempster during the past 15 years. Doug has been exceedingly gracious and helpful to me as I have transitioned into this role over the past several months, and I am grateful for his continued guidance.

I am grateful to each of you—our friends, alumni, donors and advocates. I look forward to meeting and visiting with you over the coming months as we advance our collective goal of ensuring our college is a welcoming, inclusive and vibrant place for artists, designers, performers, scholars and educators.

Sincerely,
Dean Ramón H. Rivera-Servera

, Filed Under: From the Dean

Dean’s Insider: A farewell and a new chapter for the College of Fine Arts
One last excelsior.

After 15 years as dean and five before as senior associate dean, this is my final week “deaning” for the College of Fine Arts. I want to take this parting moment to say thank you to all of our friends, supporters and advocates, both on and off campus.

I’ve been flattered by the observation that this has been a period of great change for the college. Some of that change was sought out, and some was thrust upon us. Embracing change has come not a moment too soon in the fast-changing worlds of education, technology, culture and commerce. The creative disciplines that make up this college—and those newly finding their way in—are at a confluence of wild streams of innovation that make for hazards as well as world-changing opportunities, if we harness them.

I’m immodest enough to believe the College of Fine Arts is the most innovative public arts college in the country.

As a creative college, I’ve asked that we embrace the future as much as nurture our past; we’re big enough to be modernists in the morning and classicists in the evening. We can honor the high traditions of our shared culture while being irreverently populist in our inclusivity. I’ve insisted that we celebrate the well-turned hand every bit as much as the sagacious insight and the perfected performance just the same as startling acts of spontaneity. I’ve asked that we recognize the creativity in technological invention and entrepreneurial adventure as much as in selfless acts of artistic genius. I’ve never let the arts be treated as a decorative embellishment on this ambitious Forty Acres in this headstrong state. I’ve insisted that our students’ interests always figured first in measures of our own accomplishments as a faculty and a college.

The vision, so far as there was one, emerged of its own out of these contentious and sometimes irreconcilable aspirations.

And if we as a college have become all that, it’s in no small part because of the ambition and steadfast commitment of our Fine Arts Advisory Council, and our many friends and alumni. I’ve been humbled by your generosity, honored by your trust, and blessed by your friendship.

I am hugely optimistic about our future, as well as the future of the arts in public education—and all the more so for the rejuvenating leadership of our new dean, Dr. Ramón H. Rivera-Servera.

Being dean of the College of Fine Arts has been an enormously rewarding, creative challenge. I’ll miss it—most of it, anyway. And all of you. Thank you.

I could not be more eager to get back to teaching, and writing and thinking—more deeply and calmly—about the place of the arts in our lives, with the hope that I might contribute a bit of truth and beauty to a world in need of both.

In the next issue of Dean’s Insider and moving forward, you’ll be hearing from Dr. Rivera-Servera in this newsletter. I hope you’ll join me in giving him your warmest welcome.

Semper Excelsior!

Dean Dempster signature

 

 

Doug Dempster

, Filed Under: From the Dean

Dean’s Insider: Celebrating the incredible work of our students

Photo by Angelica Monteiro.
In the College of Fine Arts, late spring is an especially exciting and rewarding time for me to see our students doing what they do best—creating new work and pushing the bounds of their artistic disciplines.

  • Every other year, the Department of Theatre and Dance hosts the Cohen New Works Festival, and I am so proud of how our students adapted this year’s festival to create engaging and safe experiences. The weeklong festival is the largest of its kind and is completely student-run and student-produced, with the support of faculty mentors. As faculty member Kirk Lynn says, the festival is “a preview of what theater is going to look like in the next five to 10 years.”
  • Last month, we saw amazing performances in our Sound in Sculpture series, a collaboration between Landmarks, the Butler School of Music and Texas Performing Arts. The event features musical compositions by student composers, all created in response to works in the Landmarks collection.
  • In the Department of Theatre and Dance, the students recently created a series of Classical Vlogues, with each student delivering a solo performance of a classical text on camera.
  • Each spring, the Visual Arts Center in the Department of Art and Art History hosts a pair of thesis exhibitions for seniors in the B.F.A. in Studio Art and the graduating M.F.A. in Studio Art students. These exhibitions run through May 23.
  • Our Design seniors have launched a new website showcasing their work, and our AET students are hosting a livestreamed showcase on May 8 starting at 1 p.m. CST.

Our students have been adaptive and nimble this past year, and I couldn’t be prouder of the work I’m seeing produced in our college.
Excelsior!

Dean Dempster signature

 

 

Doug Dempster
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