The Brown University Creative Arts Council supports the goals of individual creative arts departments and programs, while facilitating a common vision for the arts that transcends discipline and creates unity. The Council serves as a catalyst for innovative collaboration across disciplines and provides a regular forum for communication among all members of the arts community. The Creative Arts Council is for the benefit of students, faculty, staff, alumni, and friends. Through its public activities, it seeks to maximize the visibility of the arts on campus, throughout the local community, and on a national and international level. The Creative Arts Council is located at the new Granoff Center for the Creative Arts.
Richard has served as the Director of the Creative Arts Council since its founding in 2005.
The Creative Arts Council comprises the following departments at Brown:
Program in Literary Arts
The Program in Literary Arts is organized around three genres: fiction, poetry, and digital writing. Annually, the program offers more than 30 readings as well as numerous literary festivals, and six week-long residencies by notable writers.
Modern Culture and Media
The Center for Modern Culture and Media was established in 1987 and was granted departmental status in 1995. The new center and department combined concentrations in Art-Semiotics, Modern Literature and Society, and Semiotics to form a multi-media studies program with strong emphases on theoretical inquiry and production, inter-medial practice and comparative analysis. Film production courses were a component of the department dating to the late 1970s, when 16mm film production courses were inaugurated; in recent years, digital technology and internet culture have emerged as major areas of both theoretical and production work. Many current MCM concentrators do extensive work in production courses, which highlight both the intricate relations between image and sound production and theoretical inquiry into the circulation and interpretation of images and sounds in culture.
Music
The Department of Music provides a diverse curriculum for undergraduate music study, and PhD programs in ethnomusicology and computer music/multimedia. The Department gives vocal and instrumental instruction to individuals as well as ensembles, and supports a broad array of performing groups, from a Ghanaian drumming ensemble to a symphony orchestra. All faculty are professionally active—composers are performed worldwide, scholars regularly publish in the leading journals and academic presses, conductors lead and perform internationally in a variety of ensembles, both educational and professional. The department sponsors over 100 events yearly including student and professional concerts, symposia, workshops, and master classes.
Theatre Arts and Performance Studies
The Department of Theatre Arts and Performance Studies has a core of twenty faculty members, including six Clinical Appointments in the Brown/Trinity MFA Program in Acting and Directing. Many faculty members are engaged in practical theater arts (acting, dance, design, directing, playwriting) as well as in scholarship. The Department is distinctive for encouraging faculty and students to break down the theory/practice divide. The curriculum stresses a balanced and broad spectrum approach to performance and includes courses in history, literature, theory, writing for the live arts, choreography, directing, stagecraft, and design as well as modes of performance craft (dance, live art, acting, self-presentation). The Department hosts several strong graduate programs as well—a PhD in Theatre and Performance Studies and an MFA in Playwriting as well as the Brown/Trinity MFA Programs in Acting and Directing. Read about the Brown/Trinity Consortium Read about the American Dance Legacy Institute
Visual Art
The Department of Visual Art offers students a rigorous and broad art education conceptually integrated within the philosophy of a liberal arts university. It is this combination of intellectual breadth with artistic practice, which differentiates the study of Visual Art at Brown from that which is offered by a professional art school. The major areas offered include painting, sculpture, printmaking, art of the book, installation, performance, digital art, photography, and new genre. The department provides courses which accommodate over 800 enrollments annually.
David Winton Bell Gallery
The David Winton Bell Gallery serves as a vital link between the University and the local and national arts communities. The Gallery presents six major exhibitions each year concentrating on contemporary currents in 20th- and 21st-century art. Recent exhibitions include one-person shows by Elizabeth King, Annabel Daou, and Yumi Kori. The exhibition program includes an annual student show, a triennial faculty exhibition, and an annual New England artists’ show. Smaller installations, drawn from the permanent collection and loans, are mounted in the foyer adjoining the main gallery. Lectures, symposium and other educational programs accompany each exhibition. The Gallery maintains a permanent collection of more than 5000 works of art encompassing the period from the 16th century to the present, with particular strength in works on paper and 20th-century art. Highlights of the collection include major works by Robert Motherwell, Frank Stella, Lee Bontecou, Diego Rivera, Danny Lyon, Larry Clark, Aaron Siskind, and Harry Callagan. The collection is open to the public by appointment and is available for use by classes.
Rites and Reason Theatre
Rites and Reason Theatre, a research component of the Department of Africana Studies, develops new work by playwrights of all descriptions. Its trademark is its unique Research to Performance Method (RPM) of play development. Plays developed by Rites and Reason have had subsequent productions on Broadway and in regional and national tours and theaters. The Theatre prides itself on its partnerships and collaborations in the community. Since its founding, thousands of students have participated in Rites and Reason projects and productions, often working side by side with professional and community actors, writers, directors, designers and dramaturgs.