Find your place in the arts
Table of Contents Introduction to Colby Arts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 Department of Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 Bixler Art and Music Center. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3 Department of Cinema Studies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Department of Music. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Gordon Center for Creative and Performing Arts. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Department of Performance, Theater, and Dance. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 Creative Writing Program. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8 Colby College Libraries. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9 Greene Block + Studios. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 Paul J. Schupf Art Center . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11 Colby College Museum of Art . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12 Lunder Institute for American Art. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 Lyons Arts Lab. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14 Center for the Arts and Humanities. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 Campus Life . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16 Arts Office. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Find your place . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 For more information. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Find your place in the arts Bixler Art and Music Center + Department of Art Colby College Museum of Art
+ Center for the Arts and Humanities
+ Campus Life
Miller Library
Greene Block + Studios
+ Creative Writing
+ Lunder Institute for American Art
Gordon Center for Creative and Performing Arts
+ Arts Office
+ Department of Cinema Studies
Paul J. Schupf Art Center (Colby Museum's Joan Dignam Schmaltz Gallery of Art and Waterville Creates)
+ Department of Music + Department of Performance, Theater, and Dance + Arts Office + Lyons Arts Lab
Colby College
Find your place in the arts
As you settle into life at Colby, you will quickly notice the arts are the pulse of our community. Over the last few years, Colby has undergone a radical transformation that has placed the arts at the center of the student experience. This guide will help every student find their place in the arts at Colby, sharing ways to deepen in your creative and scholarly work in an arts department, access resources to create alongside other students, and attend events with world-class guest artists.
and studios in the Gordon Center for Creative and Performing Arts and Greene Block + Studios. The Colby College Museum of Art is a premier teaching museum and the largest art museum in the state of Maine, offering unique learning experiences for residents of central Maine and unlimited opportunities for artists and scholars. The Paul J. Schupf Art Center in downtown Waterville is the home to Waterville Creates with film and performance events all year long.
Colby’s arts curriculum is as expansive as its new facilities, offering students a rigorous yet flexible foundation across four primary academic departments and several interdisciplinary programs. Faculty challenge students to develop their artistic practices while connecting across other disciplines in pursuit of innovative problem solving and deepened understanding.
Colby provides a robust network of support to ensure your creative projects find the funding, mentorship, training, and research backing they need. Visiting artists and scholars from across the globe come here to perform, share their process, and work with Colby students.
COLBY ARTS
FIND YOUR PLACE IN THE ARTS
Beyond the traditional classroom, Colby’s new facilities function as professional-grade laboratories where your creative visions can take flight. Colby Arts offers new, innovative performance venues
The arts at Colby are designed to be transparent and accessible. We invite you to find your place in the arts here, to attend a performance, enroll in a class, and design your own arts event with others. We’ve built the stages, the studios, and the galleries. Now we just need your creativity to fill them.
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Department of Art
Bixler Art and Music Center
The Department of Art offers an integrated curriculum of studio and art history courses that teach students how to engage in creative artistic practices and think critically about images in the world. In studio courses, students express ideas and experiences through the creation of original artworks. In art history, students translate visual experience into written and oral expression. Students gain familiarity with historical traditions, research and curatorial skills, and art historical literature.
Bixler houses the Department of Art and Colby Libraries’ Arts and Music Library. Connected to the museum, it is a space for art history research and creative exploration in visual arts.
take studio classes in digital media, painting, drawing, photography, printmaking, and sculpture
attend guest artist talks and workshops exhibit work in the senior show learn with objects in the Colby College Museum of Art and in collections on and off campus
FIND YOUR PLACE IN THE ARTS
FIND YOUR PLACE IN THE ARTS
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Department of Cinema Studies The Cinema and Media Studies Department is committed to keeping abreast of the constantly changing media landscape of the 21st century. We look to equip students with the critical and intellectual faculties to scrutinize traditional and new media and to learn how to navigate this milieu as skilled, thoughtful media producers.
perform historically grounded, critical formal analysis of film and media
analyze a text’s aesthetic, social, cultural, and philosophical significance
produce carefully crafted, thoughtful media that
ethically approach both the subjects and the audience
Department of Music FIND YOUR PLACE IN THE ARTS 4
attend performances by students, faculty, and guest artists take applied lessons to learn to sing and/or play an instrument perform in ensemble concerts and department recitals enroll in music courses to learn about various disciplines of music practice, perform, and record in the Gordon Center
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FIND YOUR PLACE IN THE ARTS
The Department of Music offers an intimate liberal arts environment where students study music in historical, theoretical, and global contexts while developing analytical and creative skills. Students work closely with accomplished faculty and can pursue courses in theory, history/culture, composition, and performance. Numerous ensembles, private lessons, and modern facilities at the Gordon Center for Creative and Performing Arts provide extensive performance and recording opportunities.
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Gordon Center for Creative and Performing Arts This is the largest academic building at Colby and home to the Departments of Music, Cinema Studies, and Performance, Theater, and Dance. Its multifaceted space features a signature performance hall, flexible studios and makerspaces, classrooms, an arts incubator, recording studio, costume shop, and more.
Department of Performance, Theater, and Dance FIND YOUR PLACE IN THE ARTS 6
perform or work backstage on faculty-led theater and dance productions participate in workshops with guest artists attend performances, conferences, and convenings around the region and country
join the student Community Leadership Board become a work study employee
assist with community-connected arts activities
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COLBY ARTS
FIND YOUR PLACE IN THE ARTS
The Department of Performance, Theater, and Dance offers students many pathways to learn and explore through embodied practice and the historical, critical, and theoretical study of performance. Classes and productions emphasize hybridity and offer opportunities to develop skills in acting, directing, dance, choreography, design, stage management, and technical production aligned with the department’s core values: collaboration, leadership, justice, and community reciprocity.
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Creative Writing Program
Colby College Libraries
Colby’s Creative Writing Program offers a vibrant curriculum through an English major concentration or minor. Led by renowned authors, the program emphasizes the workshop method across fiction, poetry, and creative nonfiction. Students benefit from the Kristina Stahl and Jennifer Jahrling Forese writer-in-residence programs, a lively visiting writers series, and a biennial literary festival. This collaborative community nurtures literary craft, editing, and publishing, encouraging writers to explore a variety of genres and digital media.
The Colby College Libraries serve as a vital intellectual hub where rigorous academic research intersects with artistic exploration. We provide the essential resources to sustain a vibrant culture of making and thinking on campus. Our collections and specialized facilities empower the community to transform conceptual inquiries into sophisticated creative outputs within a global and historical context.
declare a concentration or minor in creative writing to connect with a spirited community through literary readings, book launches, workshops, craft talks, and open mics
work on The Colby Review, Colby’s new annual national literary magazine, and gain hands-on publishing and editorial experience
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the program brings in nationally, recognized poets and prose writers for readings, Q&As, craft talks, and class visits
enroll in Jan Plan Intensives: Colby’s unique January term that offers immersive, non-traditional courses. This includes travel-based writing labs in Kalimpong, India, or niche craft intensives not offered during the standard semesters
COLBY ARTS
Bixler Art and Music Library
access specialized scholarly databases for art history and musicology
explore unique independent media within our diverse zine collection
produce high-impact layered prints using our professional Risograph machine
showcase original work in our physical and digital exhibition spaces
FIND YOUR PLACE IN THE ARTS
FIND YOUR PLACE IN THE ARTS
attend program-sponsored literary events. Each year,
research with more than 100,000 print volumes in the
collaborate with subject librarians to integrate resources into your projects
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Greene Block + Studios
Paul J. Schuf Art Center
A unique destination for vibrant programming for Colby students and residents of the greater Waterville community, it also serves as the home for the Colby Museum’s Lunder Institute for American Art, including studios for artists-in-residence. The Arts Office manages a studio open for student use, and the Lyons Arts Lab manages a studio for Lyons Arts Lab student project use.
Located in the heart of downtown Waterville on Main Street, the Paul J. Schupf Art Center is a lively, distinctive hub for visual and performing arts, film, and arts education. Developed in partnership with Colby College and Waterville Creates, it includes the Colby Museum’s Joan Dignam Schmaltz Gallery of Art and is free and open to all. Waterville Creates hosts programming all year long in the Ticonic Gallery and Studios, Maine Film Center, and Waterville Opera House and offers special membership rates for students.
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FIND YOUR PLACE IN THE ARTS
FIND YOUR PLACE IN THE ARTS
Schupf Art Center
Greene Block + Studios
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Dowtown Waterville
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Colby College Museum of Art
Lunder Institute for American Art
The Colby Museum welcomes students from every Colby department to engage with the arts and connect through our dynamic programs, events, and collaborations. There are many ways you can get involved! We invite students of all backgrounds and levels of experience with art to participate through:
internships
Colby Museum’s Lunder Institute for American Art invites visiting artists, scholars, and museum professionals to engage across disciplines with the Colby community. Our fellowships, convenings, oral archives, and other programs, partnerships, and initiatives forge connections and opportunities for scholars and living artists that also benefit and enrich the Colby College community. Students can:
employment opportunities
work with visiting artists and scholars
Colby Museum Student Board
attend talks, workshops, studio visits, and class
free programs and events, including with Lunder Institute fellows
work with faculty, artists, and partners across
class visits and collection access in the Landay Teaching Gallery
access the Audio Archive and research resources,
Galleries are free FIND YOUR PLACE IN THE ARTS
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Tuesday–Saturday: 10 a.m.–5 p.m. Sunday: noon–5 p.m. Thursdays until 9 p.m during the academic year
departments and institutions
explore recorded conversations, scholarship, and documentation of programs
FIND YOUR PLACE IN THE ARTS
and open to all:
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engagements with fellows
engage with artists in residence at Greene Block +
Studios by visiting their studios and observing creative processes
experience cross-institutional programs and conversations with major museums
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Center for the Arts and Humanities
The Lyons Arts Lab Colby’s Lyons Arts Lab elevates student work in the arts with tailored support for each project, helping students challenge, expand, and refine their ideas. In the spirit of the liberal arts, Lyons Arts Lab programs open pathways for experimentation across disciplines, serve as gateways into the College’s academic arts programs, and offer support for the most rigorous creative practices.
provides professional mentorship and collaboration
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produce new work and live events
apply for a range of grants experience summer internships at Waterville arts organizations
join the student advisory board to shape campus-wide events
contribute to FAUNA, an environmental humanities literary and art magazine
steer the conversation around the yearly
FIND YOUR PLACE IN THE ARTS
supports rigorous collaboration across disciplines to
The Center for the Arts and Humanities provides funding for students to experience the power of the arts and humanities in their academic, creative, and personal journeys. From seed grants to major research projects, student-led events to career-defining internships in the arts and humanities, the CAH is here to turn your big ideas into reality.
humanities theme
offers workshops and resources to extend curricular projects
expands student access to equipment and technology provides access to summer experiences for study,
collaboration, and concentrated work through artist on- and off-campus entities.
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Campus Life
Arts Office
Join one of more than 100 student-run clubs and organizations that speak to your passions and interests. Or try something new. Student clubs receive a budget to support their work, and Campus Life may provide additional event-specific funding.
The Arts Office is here to support all Colby students to find their place in the arts, build their artistic community, and bring their creative ideas into action. If you have a creative idea and don’t know where to start, contact the Arts Office for support and connection to resources across campus and in Waterville.
become an Arts Associate, serve as an ambassador for the arts and learn skills in arts administration
support innovative community engagement and arts education programs
find the spaces and training you need for your creative endeavors
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Find your place
Did something in this guide spark an interest? Start by checking out arts.colby.edu. That website links to every organization, space, and opportunity listed in this guide. If you can’t find what you’re looking for, email the Arts Office at colbyarts@colby.edu. The Colby Arts website also features all upcoming arts events. See what’s coming up this semester and reserve your free tickets. All arts events are free and open to all. Invite a friend and become a familiar face in the Colby and Waterville arts communities. If you’d like to get more involved in these events, join the Colby Arts Office team as an Arts Associate. These positions support artistic planning, community engagement, production, marketing and communications, and visitor experience. Arts Associates are ambassadors for the arts at Colby, working with students to design and support their own arts events. FIND YOUR PLACE IN THE ARTS 18
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COLBY ARTS
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Get updates and behind the scenes looks into the arts by following @colby.arts on Instagram and Facebook.
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To get more information and see all upcoming events, go to arts.colby.edu. Follow along on Instagram and Facebook at colby.arts.
FIND YOUR PLACE IN THE ARTS
Contact Colby Arts Office at colbyarts@colby.edu.
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COLBY ARTS
Colby College 4000 Mayflower Hill Waterville, Maine 04901 arts.colby.edu