HISTORY AND CAMPUS
6
California Institute of the Arts was established by Walt E. and Roy O. Disney through the merger of two professional schools: the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music, founded in 1883, and the Chouinard Art Institute, founded in 1921. The Disney brothers were joined by Lulu May Von Hagen, chair of the conservatory, in this effort. In 1970, CalArts first opened its doors at an interim campus in Burbank before moving to its permanent campus in Valencia, 30 miles north of downtown Los Angeles, in 1971. Today, in addition to providing degree programs through six schools— Art, Critical Studies, Dance, Film/Video, Music, and Theater—CalArts further extends its commitment to the arts through the Roy and Edna Disney/CalArts Theater (redcat) in downtown L.A. and the awardwinning Community Arts Partnership (cap) youth arts education program. The Valencia campus occupies 60 acres on hills overlooking the Santa Clarita Valley. At the center of campus is the five-level, 500,000-square-foot Main Building, where different arts share space under one roof. Spread on sloping hillsides around this complex are the Wild Beast music pavilion, two residence halls, and several other buildings containing studios and various production and performance spaces. Students have 24/7 access to studios, shops, labs, editing suites, and other production facilities throughout the academic year. Outdoor recreational features include a swimming pool and tennis and basketball courts, while open fields and ample lawns dotted with shade trees allow for quiet reading and casual sports. Farther afield, beyond the local vicinity, lie the enormous cultural, professional and entertainment resources of Los Angeles—the secondlargest metropolitan region in the United States, home to one of the most diverse populations in the world, and a global hub of arts and media.
FROM THE OFFICE OF THE PROVOST Jeannene M. Przyblyski The education we offer at CalArts is an invitation to join a rare community of working artists, writers and critical thinkers. Our primary emphasis is to help students develop their own unique strengths and visions as individuals; and yet we also challenge them to develop the knowledge, skill and versatility to work with colleagues—to create collaboratively and across conventional disciplines. In some métiers, the need for collaboration is obvious: conducting an orchestra or directing a narrative film requires the energies of many others. But even in solitary pursuits— the painter alone in her studio, the novelist alone in his study—we recognize artists as agents of change on multiple fronts, culturally, socially and politically. Through rigorous programs combining investigation and critique, we work with our students to enable them to have an impact on our communities through their art—and to apply the power of creative thinking in unexpected ways to address problems of the world. Social innovation is creative innovation: it is the result of people who dare to think beyond what they already know—and who strive for what they can only speculate may be true. In a new student-initiated feature of campus life, “Institute Commons,” we are setting aside blocks of creative free time during which students from across the Institute meet, brainstorm and experiment together, begin joint projects, and develop work outside the curricula. Institute Commons complements the already full slate of activities at school—in the classroom, in the studios and shops, in performance, in production, or teaching in the Community Arts Partnership youth arts education program. Our students are in a position to capitalize on a truly enviable range of artistic resources in order to prepare for professional lives in the arts. As they define their own successes as they go, they will also remain, for the rest of their lives, part of a network of CalArtians that now spans the globe, continuing to open uncharted territories. Dr. Przyblyski was appointed provost of CalArts in 2012. She was previously vice president and dean of academic affairs of the San Francisco Art Institute, and served on numerous Bay Area arts boards and commissions. A visual artist and art historian, she has long championed the arts as a means for civic engagement.