February 24, 2021, Filed Under: From the DeanDean’s Insider: We survived the winter storm We’re approaching the one-year anniversary of the COVID evacuation of the Forty Acres—Friday, March 13, 2020. “Only” a year has gone by, 12 months, but this date last year already seems a world and an age ago—a date and a year against which we’ll mark our calendars for years to come. I hope you and yours came through this past week safe and healthy, with minimal damage to your homes. I hope you’ve enjoyed a warm bath and filled your pantry, commonplace conveniences that at least for the moment, seem precious luxuries. In Austin, here on campus, we’ve been picking up the pieces. Swabbing out the floods and checking for power and internet. The campus community was scattered and displaced by the storm, but pulled together more tightly than ever, looking after one another. I took two faculty families into my home, which lost water, but not power and heat. We opened campus buildings as a refuge for students, faculty and staff who had no other options. I jogged over to campus during the worst of the storm to make sure our buildings were accessible and operating, which gave me the chance to watch young Texans frolicking heedlessly in more snow than many had ever seen before, and got to push some of their cars out of more snow than they knew how to drive in. By the time you get this, we’ll be back in session having lost a week and a half of classes. We’re adjusting course schedules and learning objectives to get students through their coursework by the end of the semester. We’re restarting our COVID testing and vaccinations in Gregory Gym and inoculating more and more Austinites every day. Our students don’t know it yet, but this past year has given them an invaluable gift. It’s tested their resilience, their mettle, their grit. They’ve learned to be creative and productive under the most confined and challenging conditions. They’ve learned to lean on others and to lend a hand. They’ve learned in fighting a pandemic or surviving a killer winter storm that going it alone can be a fatal prescription. They’ve learned how deeply committed their faculty and this university is to their education and their futures. They’ve been given a great gift of learning that they’re tougher and more capable and determined than they might have ever guessed. It is, to be sure, the school of hard knocks and life lessons, but it’s an unforgettable education nonetheless. We’ve picked ourselves up, and today we restart our teaching and learning. Once again. I am willfully treating last week’s horrendous winter storm as the altogether fittingly unforgettable climax, and finale, to an altogether unforgettably challenging year. I am taking arms against a sea of troubles by declaring this week’s full-on, glorious Texas sunshine as the awaited light at the end of this long tunnel. Mirabile dictu! Excelsior! Doug Dempster
February 1, 2021, Filed Under: From the DeanDean’s Insider: Introducing the next dean of the UT College of Fine Arts I write to share the good news that today the provost has named Dr. Ramón H. Rivera-Servera as the next dean of the College of Fine Arts. His appointment will begin and mine will end July 1. Dr. Rivera-Servera comes to UT Austin from Northwestern University, where he chaired the Department of Performance Studies and the Department of Theatre in the School of Communication. He knows the College of Fine Arts and UT well as the first graduate of the Performance as Public Practice Ph.D. program in UT Austin’s Department of Theatre and Dance. He returns to Austin as the first Latino dean in the history of the College of Fine Arts. Dr. Rivera-Servera is a prolific interdisciplinary scholar whose research explores the ways the arts contribute to social transformation and help us become a more intentionally collaborative and ethical society. His publications focus on creative ethnography, new work development and Black and Latinx arts and cultures in North America and the Caribbean. His scholarship documents a wide array of performance practices, ranging from theatre and concert dance to social dance, fashion and speech. He is the author of Performing Queer Latinidad: Dance, Sexuality, Politics (University of Michigan Press, 2012). We have been through a period of tremendous change and growth during the last 14 years, and the college will continue to lean into the future under Dean Rivera-Severa’s leadership. I’m too immodest to wonder that the College of Fine Arts is anything less than the most entrepreneurial and innovative public university arts college in the country. We are resolutely populist in our inclusiveness and rigorously venerable in our traditions, but we are also impatiently progressive, entrepreneurial and unorthodox. And if we are all that, it’s in no small part because of the ambition and steadfast commitment of our Fine Arts Advisory Council, our friends and alumni. I am hugely optimistic about the college’s future, as well as the future of the arts in public education in this country—and all the more so for Dr. Rivera-Servera being appointed the next dean of the College of Fine Arts. I hope you’ll join me in giving a warm welcome to Dean Rivera-Servera. I look forward to working with him as he transitions into this new role. Excelsior! Doug Dempster
January 14, 2021, Filed Under: From the DeanDean’s Insider: Creativity and resilience in our students during COVID As we’ve adapted to new online and hybrid teaching models, our faculty members have shown extraordinary creativity this past semester, and our students have stretched themselves in new ways. In a terrific essay in Art Education Journal, Associate Professor of Practice Megan Hildebrandt writes about teaching Studio Art courses online during the pandemic and how her students have stepped up: “Across the board, I saw significant growth in creative problem solving, innovation, empathy, and introspection from the 50 or so students I worked with. During the shelter-in-place, my students SHOWED UP. I do not mean just physically—I mean mentally, creatively, spiritually. They showed up in a way that, to be honest, they did not always when we were in person earlier in the semester. I think the pandemic made all of us feel more vulnerable, and that translated to a very rich last half of the semester, when many of them made significant breakthroughs in their creative work.” She goes on to give several examples of how her students used art to process the current moment and to create structure for themselves during shelter-in-place conditions. I think you’ll be inspired at what they’ve achieved and how they’ve used their creativity to turn the constraints of the pandemic into rich learning opportunities. While we all look forward to the day when we can welcome our students back into our studio and performance spaces at full capacity, I’m heartened to know that our faculty and students have been successful in creating positive teaching and learning outcomes this year. Excelsior! Dean Doug Dempster
January 12, 2021, Filed Under: MeetingsVideo: December 9 Spotlight Session: Creative Entrepreneurship
December 16, 2020, Filed Under: From the DeanDean’s Insider: A season for gratitude Gratitude has been on my mind lately, and not just because of the recent Thanksgiving holiday. As I look back at all we’ve been through as a college in 2020, I’m so grateful to our faculty and staff for their herculean efforts to keep our classes and operations running. It’s no surprise that our college’s creativity and generous spirit has been at the heart of our successes in moving our college forward this year. I’m grateful to the faculty, who dove into the brave world of Zoom and continued to create positive learning experiences for our students. I’m grateful to our fearless department chairs, who made countless decisions to ensure safe and effective teaching and learning conditions for our students and faculty. I’m grateful to our staff for their tireless work over the spring, summer and fall as they adapted to constantly changing plans and conditions. I’m grateful to our students for bravely facing a year like no other, while showing compassion toward their faculty and one another. I’m grateful to our college’s Advisory Council and donors, who have continued their incredible advocacy of and investment in our college’s success. Thank you to each and every one of you for all that you’ve done this year. 2020 has been more stressful and challenging than we had ever imagined, but it’s made even more clear that when we work together, we can overcome mountains. Wishing you all a safe, COVID-free holiday! Excelsior! Dean Doug Dempster
November 20, 2020, Filed Under: From the DeanRemembering Edith O’Donnell Edith O’Donnell, a longtime friend to the College of Fine Arts and a member of the college’s Advisory Council, passed away this past week at the age of 94. Our thoughts and hearts go out to her family and friends. The Dallas Morning News referred to Edith without exaggeration as the “Mount Rushmore of Dallas philanthropists.” On the UT campus, it’s no understatement to say that our college and most of our faculty and students benefit from her generosity every single day. Edith, along with her husband Peter, have truly been two of the great arts and education philanthropists of Texas. A UT graduate, she joined the Fine Arts Advisory Council in 1990. We honored her with the E. William Doty Award—our college’s highest honor—in 1997. Her generosity to our college extends across many disciplines, including the Chair in Latin American Art History and Criticism, the History of Music Chair and the Theatre for Youth Chair, faculty endowments that have allowed us to attract and retain distinguished artists, scholars and performers. She also helped establish the Dallas Endowed Presidential Scholarship in Art, which has supported more than 50 students since it was created in 1994. And her Visiting Artists Chair and the Visiting Chair in the Fine and Performing Arts have allowed us to elevate the profile of our programs and to expose our students to an incredible, diverse array of visiting guest artists and their work. We’re enormously grateful to Edith O’Donnell. I’ll miss her gentle, generous spirit greatly. But that spirit will live on in our college, in our faculty and in our students, every day for many, many years to come. Excelsior! Doug Dempster Dean
November 6, 2020, Filed Under: MeetingsNovember 18 Virtual Meeting Details Dear Advisory Council members, Please join us for our third Fine Arts Advisory Council virtual fall meeting on Wednesday, November 18, from 1:00 to 2:30 p.m. Dean Doug Dempster will be in conversation with our Fine Arts Student Council President Yessmeen Moharram, and Assistant Dean Doreen Lorenzo — along with Design Chair Kate Canales and AET Interim Chair Michael Baker — will give an in-depth look at what’s new in the School of Design and Creative Technologies, including the new M.A. in Design in Health program that launched this fall in partnership with the Dell Medical School. We will send out more details next week, but until then, please send any questions to me or to Natalie Schuessler. I hope you will join us, and as always, don’t forget to RSVP to cofarsvp@austin.utexas.edu so we know to expect you. Warm Regards, Sondra Lomax Executive Director of Development
