The Arts Division at UC Santa Cruz offers creative and critical studies of art and culture at the undergraduate and graduate level. At UCSC, instruction in the arts inspires and develops the capacity for individual and collaborative creative inquiry, analysis, and action within and beyond the university. Our faculty includes artists, historians, critics, performers, and theorists working across the arts in a global context.

Undergraduate education in the arts includes programs in the departments of Art, Film & Digital Media, History of Art and Visual Culture, Music, and Theater Arts. Established graduate programs include PhDs in Film & Digital Media, Visual Studies, and Music, as well as the interdisciplinary Digital Arts and New Media MFA program, the Social Documentation MA, the Music Composition DMA, the Music MA, and the fifth-year certificate in Theater Arts.  Additional graduate programs in Art and Theater Arts are currently in development.

The Arts Division provides students with access to quality work spaces, including the Digital Arts Research Center with two experimental media labs, a state-of-the-art music recital hall, practice rooms, electronic music studios, and recording facilities, four theaters for dramatic productions, filmmaking studios and editing suites, surround-sound screening theaters, drama and dance studios, painting and printmaking studios, a foundry, photography and computer laboratories, and specialized lecture and seminar classrooms. 

Exhibition space in the arts includes galleries for students and faculty shows; the Sesnon Gallery, currently celebrating its 40th anniversary, presents curated exhibitions to the university community and the general public. The Arts Division is also in the planning stages for the UC Santa Cruz Museum of the Arts and Sciences, the first-ever academic museum to bridge arts and sciences research, which will become an on-campus hub for cultural displays, interdisciplinary exhibitions, conferences, symposia, and seminars.

Among the Division’s many performing and fine arts programs, Shakespeare Santa Cruz is an internationally recognized professional repertory company that is currently celebrating its 30th anniversary season. The Film and Digital Media Department coordinates quarterly student film screenings and, an annual Visiting Artist colloquium series, and sponsors Eyecandy, a student-run journal devoted to the critical analysis of film, television, and digital media. The department also brings national and international film and media artists to campus to present their research.

The Music Department produces an annual April in Santa Cruz festival of new music, a fully-staged opera production each spring,  and presents a variety of solo and ensemble concert programs throughout the year. The History of Art and Visual Culture Department coordinates a series of speakers and seminars each year on rotating topics supported by the Rebele Chair. The Art Department sponsors regularly scheduled public presentations as well as quarterly Open Studios and a print and photo sale in the spring. The Theater Arts department stages a wide range of original performances, as well as musicals and dramatic classics. The Digital Arts and New Media MFA program regularly sponsors digital arts events, such as festivals, symposia, visiting speakers and exhibitions of student work, both on and off-campus, culminating in an annual exhibition of graduate thesis research.

As Dean, one of my top priorities for the Division is building a sustainable model for outstanding achievement in the arts. With the high quality of our faculty, staff and students in the Arts at UC Santa Cruz we are doing just that. 

I invite you to learn more about our programs and welcome an opportunity to hear from you at: artsdean@ucsc.edu, or visit us on Facebook.