Tag Archive for Mellon

Wesleyan Receives $250,000 Mellon Foundation Grant to Support Artist Residency, Commission Program

by Lauren Rubenstein • December 20, 2018

Wesleyan has considerable experience hosting artist residencies of varying length and complexity. Pictured is visiting artist-in-residence Eiko Otake with Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance students in 2017. (Photo by Brendan Plake, courtesy of Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts.)

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded Wesleyan a $250,000 grant to implement an innovative artist residency model to deepen engagement with the arts on campus and expand their impact in the community. The grant will be spent over three-and-a-half years, in a period ending in June 2022.

Wesleyan has a long history of hosting artist residencies, in which visiting artists offer master classes and give talks based around a single performance or art installation. Most residencies have been relatively short-term, with a few notable exceptions. Under the Mellon grant, the University will establish an expanded version of the artist residency model with a focus on commissioning original, innovative work. Resident artists will teach a semester-long course, and will become embedded in a particular department but also work across departmental and community borders. They will also conceive and develop a piece of art or performance with student interns/apprentices who are integrally engaged in the generative process over a 12-month period, and premiere that commissioned piece as part of Wesleyan’s presenting or exhibition season or, depending on the work, in a venue off campus.

“Historically, universities have been crucial for artistic experimentation, and Wesleyan has long been a home for adventurous, creative work. With support from the Mellon Foundation, we will nurture, support, and promote innovative artistic work,” said President Michael S. Roth. “Our goal is to give artists the resources and stimuli to help them be cultural catalysts, while also infusing the arts more deeply into campus life at Wesleyan.”

by Bill Holder • March 30, 2017

The Center for Pedagogical Innovation and Lifelong Learning (CPI) helps faculty use new technologies to benefit their teaching. Antonio Gonzalez, professor of Spanish and director of the Center for Global Studies, uses videoconferencing technology in his class to connect with students in Madrid.

Antonio Gonzalez, professor of Spanish and director of the Center for Global Studies, is comfortably seated in front of a semicircle of 11 students. He holds an iPad Pro that controls two large screens on the wall behind him and enables him to move effortlessly, seamlessly from Google Maps, to video clips, to text he can annotate on the iPad. All the while he converses in Spanish with his students about a movie that tells the story of a Moroccan woman repatriating the body of her brother after he died crossing the Strait of Gibraltar in a small boat.

In another class, Gonzalez and a colleague in Madrid co-teach with the help of high-quality videoconferencing technology. (See article.)

“You can’t believe what a success my trans-Atlantic classroom arrangement has become. It was as if the students in Spain were here with us,” says Gonzalez. In one class, students in Spain conversed with peers in Middletown about why certain homicides in Ciudad Juarez had not been classified as terrorism. “Talk about interculturalism!”

Technology is helping Gonzalez to teach differently and more effectively. And that’s one goal of the Center for Pedagogical Innovation and Lifelong Learning (CPI), which has been working with faculty members on new techniques and pedagogical strategies.

Now the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has given the CPI a major boost with a $750,000 grant to fund its activities for the next four and a half years.

by Kate Carlisle • January 28, 2014

The Center for the Arts received a $750,000 grant to support the development of new work by a range of diverse artists, interdisciplinary collaborations, co-teaching initiatives and arts-based campus-wide projects of the Creative Campus Initiative, as well as the ICPP, the University’s post-graduate program.

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation awarded Wesleyan’s Center for the Arts a $750,000 grant to support the Creative Campus Initiative and the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance.

Half a million dollars of the $750,000 grant will be matched by $1 million to be raised to endow continued cross-disciplinary Creative Campus activities. With support from Wesleyan alumni, the fundraising campaign to meet this challenge is being launched on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of the CFA during the 2013-14 season.

“This terrific grant is a recognition of the critical role the arts play at Wesleyan,” said President Michael S. Roth. “The CFA understands art as fundamental to a liberal education and its Creative Campus Initiative makes arts accessible to students and faculty in all disciplines; the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance supports an interdisciplinary and cross-cultural approach to performance. Both of these programs contribute to the rich artistic life at Wesleyan and have impact far beyond campus as well.”

The grant will support the development of new work by a range of diverse artists, interdisciplinary collaborations, co-teaching initiatives and arts-based campus-wide projects of the Creative Campus Initiative, as well as the ICPP, the university’s post-graduate program.

“With this leadership support, we will be able to continue forging powerful connections between numerous faculty in different departments and between faculty and visiting artists, so that the arts are more deeply integrated into non-arts areas at Wesleyan for the benefit of our students,” said Pamela Tatge, Director of the CFA. “We will also be able to extend the reach of the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance through a field-wide convening this July.”

The event on July 25 will underscore ICPP’s commitment to the evolving field of performance curation, and will affirm its role as a leading proponent of curatorial inquiry, addressing contemporary performance through a variety of institutional platforms and intersections with other disciplines. Designed for presenters, curators, artists and members of the cultural community, the day-long symposium will include panel discussions, artist lectures/performances, and interactive work-sessions.

The Mellon Foundation previously awarded the Center for the Arts a grant in July 2010 to help support the expansion of the Creative Campus Initiative’s cross-disciplinary exchanges, development of new courses, and student engagement in a wide variety of opportunities to make, experience and understand art; as well as support the planning and partial funding to launch the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance to enhance professional practice in the presenting field.

The goals of the Creative Campus Initiative at Wesleyan are to provide arts experiences for students that illuminate issues of cultural and societal concern; to allow students to integrate arts research and practice into their work in other disciplines; to provide non-arts faculty with the tools to involve integration of artistic research methods and modes of inquiry; and to support artists in theater, music and dance (both faculty artists and visiting artists) who work with scholars and materials in non-arts areas in ways that will advance the artists’ own research, and extend the arts into new areas of campus curricular and co-curricular life.

Mellon Foundation Supports Curatorial Institute, Certificate Program at CFA

by David Pesci • August 3, 2010

The Andrew W. Mellon Foundation has awarded Wesleyan’s Center for the Arts (CFA) $750,000 to support the development of artists’ new work, interdisciplinary collaborations, co-teaching initiatives and arts-based campus-wide projects as well as the planning and partial funding of the Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP), a new post-graduate professional certificate program for performing arts presenters.

Pamela Tatge (Photo by Bill Burkhart)

“The CFA’s goal is to elevate the place of art, artists and the artistic process at Wesleyan in ways that innovatively strengthen teaching, student learning and art-making,” says Pamela Tatge, director of the Center for the Arts. “The Mellon-funded projects will help to achieve these goals by supporting the creative practice of diverse artists; sponsoring cross-disciplinary exchange and new course development; engaging students in a wide variety of opportunities to make, experience and understand art; and launching the ICPP to enhance professional practice in the presenting field.”

Tatge anticipates that by the end of the grant’s four-year period, powerful new connections will exist between numerous faculty in different departments and between faculty and visiting artists, “so that the arts are more organically integrated into non-arts areas at Wesleyan.”

Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance
The Institute for Curatorial Practice in Performance (ICPP) brings artists, presenters, academics, and other performing arts professionals together

by Olivia Drake • October 8, 2009

Jill Morawski, director, Center for the Humanities, professor of psychology, and Don Moon, dean of the Social Sciences and Interdisciplinary Programs, the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Professor in the College of Social Studies, professor of government and tutor in the College of Social Studies; received a $142,000 Mellon Foundation grant on Oct. 2. The award will fund the John E. Sawyer Seminar on “Comparative Study of Cultures.”