Architecture and history
The school originated in the 1960s as the School of Fine Arts, tracing its earliest academic unit to the creation of the Department of Fine Arts in 1964. It was later reorganized and renamed the School of Arts in the 1990s, before assuming its current name in honor of Academy Award-winning Hollywood actress Claire Trevor (1910–2000), [1] a longtime resident of nearby Newport Beach and the stepmother of UCI benefactor Donald Bren, in 2001. [2] [3] [4]
The school represents the largest contribution to the campus by architect William Pereira, who oversaw its construction in 1970. It features a distinctive "modular" design in which individual buildings are connected by an overhead network of pillar-supported canopies. Early architectural sketches showed a design incorporating a lattice of broadly curved columns around the buildings, this was ultimately simplified into the flared solid forms of the buildings themselves. In 2000, Maya Lin was commissioned to design the 2005 completed and 30,000 square foot big Arts Plaza at the school, which costs $3.6 million to build. Conceived as a multisensory "garden of perception", the plaza incorporates a water-table sculpture, odorous plants such as jasmine and rosemary, orange trees marking its entrances, “whispering benches” that play pre-recorded sounds from speakers, illuminated pathways and a 200-seat outdoor amphitheater designed to function as a gathering space and performance venue. [5] [6] [7] The Arts Plaza is listed by UCI as a public art site that open to visitors, as part of UCI’s publicly accessible campus arts environment. [8] Adjacent to the Arts Plaza is the Claire Trevor Theater, the school’s principal proscenium venue, which was originally known as the Village Theater, before being renovated from 1995 to 2002 and renamed in honor of Claire Trevor, following a donation by her. It seats 287 people. [9] In fall 2011, the new "green" Contemporary Arts Center opened in the heart of the school, a $42.35-million building equipped with studios and spaces for displaying, staging, and producing art. [10] It serves as the new anchor for the art school complex.
Departments and faculty
Art department
Founded under the name Studio Art, the department renamed itself in 2012. It teaches a wide range of contemporary media, including drawing, electronic art and design, new genres, painting, performance, photography, sculpture, and video and digital filmmaking. The department has around 20 full-time faculty members and accepts about 10 graduate students each year into its three-year M.F.A. program.
Dance department
The UCI Dance department teaches ballet, modern dance, improvisation, and jazz performance and choreography, as well as courses in the history of dance, dance medicine and science, and the integration of dance with interactive technologies such as motion capture and telematics. [11]
Drama department
Robert Cohen organized an undergraduate repertory company that took Oedipus Rex on the road to UC San Diego and UC Santa Cruz in the department's early years. Other early productions included The Assassination of Jean Paul Marat by the Marquis de Sade , "Little Mary Sunshine", Night of the Iguana and Midsummer Night's Dream . [12] William Inge, author of such plays as Bus Stop, Picnic, and The Dark at the Top of the Stairs taught playwriting in the drama department in the 1970s. Jerzy Grotowski, acting theorist and founder of the Polish Laboratory Theater, joined the drama faculty in 1983, [13] and conducted his Objective Drama project in the fields and barn south of the main campus. UCI graduate drama student James Slowiak was his chief assistant during the project years. [13]
Music department
The Music department offers both a B.A. and a B.Mus at the undergraduate level, as well as a two-year M.F.A. degree program. Emphases at the Master's level include choral conducting, collaborative piano, guitar/lute performance, instrumental and piano performance, and vocal arts. There is also a Ph.D. degree in Integrated Composition, Improvisation, and Technology (ICIT) and Musicology. [14]
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