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October 26, 2022
Dear Arts Community:
As I launch into my second year as UCSC Arts Dean, I’m so proud of our serious and thoughtful work including our Diversity, Equity and Inclusion (DEI) efforts through harnessing the particular power of the arts. All of our DEI action plans are now published on the Arts Division website, making clear our prioritization for all.
This year, I’m challenging the Arts Division to establish mentorship programs across the ranks from faculty to staff to students which will be published on our new revamped websites by 2023. Mentorship matters as we map our paths in the world which is a lifetime process! At UCSC Arts, we strive to establish best practices in our institution as we diversify the faculty, decolonize the curriculum and continue to create pipelines of collaboration across and beyond the university. With these ambitious goals in mind, I heartily welcome our new faculty (pictured below) when I hosted them for lunch along with our divisional staff.
Since arriving at UCSC, I have strongly supported efforts to secure a climate-controlled and collecting art space, as well as an outdoor museum to amplify our campus destination for the richest beauty and biodiversity. The Institute of the Arts and Sciences, under the newly stabilized directorship of Dr. Rachel Nelson, will be opening beautiful new galleries in January 2023 at 100 Panetta Street in Santa Cruz, near the UCSC Westside Research Park where our Environmental Art and Social Practice (EASP) and Social Documentation (SocDoc) M.F.A. programs live. We are thrilled to bring to the university and to our local and regional community world-class artists contending with the most important issues of our day, and to provide creative gathering places for our students where they can innovative ideas, develop craft, and actualize themselves in the world. We are working on an outdoor collection of public art focused on policing as part of our DEI efforts. More funding and opportunities to join these efforts abound!
Every Third Thursday between 4-5pm, please join us at our Sesnon Salons as we celebrate each department and program’s latest and greatest work, and as we gather together to inventory our transformed selves in the pandemic. The next one is November 17 and will focus on Film and Digital Media, my own home department. I especially want to thank the Sesnon Art Gallery manager, Louise Leong, for helping to make these events so successful and her tireless work in creating such outstanding exhibitions at the Sesnon. Be sure to see the current show there, Frames Per Second which is a rotating exhibition of exemplary films from the Social Documentation 2021 and 2022 M.F.A. Cohorts. It runs through January 14, 2023.
We continue to learn in our spaces across generations, and for this I am in awe of the transformations that UCSC Arts ensures in our lives and our communities. Let this great feeling of support for our programs be known as we embark on Giving Day this November 2, 2022!
With warmest wishes for health and peace,
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