California Institute of the Arts - AbsoluteAstronomy.com

The California Institute of the Arts, commonly referred to as CalArts, is located in Valencia

Valencia, California

Valencia is an affluent planned community located in the City of Santa Clarita, California and Los Angeles County, California, U.S. in the northwestern corner of the Santa Clarita Valley, adjacent to Interstate 5. In 1987, it was one of the four unincorporated communities that merged to create the...

, in Los Angeles County, California

Los Angeles County, California

Los Angeles County is a county in the U.S. state of California. As of 2010 U.S. Census, the county had a population of 9,818,605, making it the most populous county in the United States. Los Angeles County alone is more populous than 42 individual U.S. states...

. It was incorporated in 1961 as the first degree-granting institution of higher learning in the United States created specifically for students of both the visual and the performing arts. It is authorized by the Western Association of Schools and Colleges (WASC) to grant Bachelor of Fine Arts

Bachelor of Fine Arts

In the United States and Canada, the Bachelor of Fine Arts degree, usually abbreviated BFA, is the standard undergraduate degree for students seeking a professional education in the visual or performing arts. In some countries such a degree is called a Bachelor of Creative Arts or BCA...

and Master of Fine Arts

Master of Fine Arts

A Master of Fine Arts is a graduate degree typically requiring 2–3 years of postgraduate study beyond the bachelor's degree , although the term of study will vary by country or by university. The MFA is usually awarded in visual arts, creative writing, filmmaking, dance, or theatre/performing arts...

in the visual, performing, and as of 1994, literary arts. The Herb Alpert School of Music was accredited in 2009 to grant a Doctor of Musical Arts

Doctor of Musical Arts

The Doctor of Musical Arts degree is a doctoral academic degree in music. The D.M.A. combines advanced studies in an applied area of specialization with graduate-level academic study in subjects such as music history, music theory, or music pedagogy. The D.M.A...

.

The school was founded and created by Walt Disney

Walt Disney

Walter Elias "Walt" Disney was an American film producer, director, screenwriter, voice actor, animator, entrepreneur, entertainer, international icon, and philanthropist, well-known for his influence in the field of entertainment during the 20th century. Along with his brother Roy O...

in the early 1960s and staffed by a diverse array of professionals. The institute was started as Disney's dream of an interdisciplinary "Caltech of the arts." CalArts provides a collaborative environment for all sorts of artists. Students are free to develop their own work (over which they retain control and copyright) in a workshop atmosphere, as respected members of a community of artists in which authority is constantly tested and where teaching works through persuasion rather than coercion. Intercultural exchange among artists helps in practicing and understanding of the art making process in the broadest context possible.

History

CalArts was originally formed as a merger of the Chouinard Art Institute

Chouinard Art Institute

The Chouinard Art Institute was a professional art school founded in 1921 in Los Angeles, California, by Nelbert Murphy Chouinard .-Founder:...

(founded 1921) and the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music (founded 1883). Both of the formerly existing institutions were going through financial difficulties around the same time, and the founder of the Art Institute, Nelbert Chouinard, was also fatally ill. It was through the will of Walt Disney, who discovered and trained many of his studio artists at Chouinard (including Mary Blair

Mary Blair

Mary Blair , born Mary Robinson, was an American artist who was prominent in producing art and animation for The Walt Disney Company, drawing concept art for such films as Alice in Wonderland, Peter Pan, Song of the South and Cinderella...

, Maurice Noble

Maurice Noble

Maurice Noble was an American animation background artist and layout designer whose contributions to the industry spanned more than 60 years. He was a long-time associate of animation director Chuck Jones, most notably at Warner Bros. in the 1950s...

and some of the Nine Old Men, among others), that the merger of the two institutions was coordinated. Joining him were his brother Roy O. Disney

Roy O. Disney

Roy Oliver Disney was, with his younger brother, Walt Disney, the co-founder of what is now The Walt Disney Company.-Early life:...

, Lulu Von Hagen and Thornton Ladd (Ladd & Kelsey, Architects), of the Los Angeles Conservatory of Music.

In 1965, the Alumni Association was founded as a non-profit organization and was governed by a twelve member Board of Directors to serve the best interests of the Institute and its programs. Members included leading professional artists and musicians, who contributed their knowledge, experience, and skill to strengthen the institute. The twelve founding Board of Directors members included Mary Costa

Mary Costa

Mary Costa is an American singer, actress, and Disney Legend. She is best known for playing the voice of Princess Aurora in the 1959 Disney film Sleeping Beauty. She is also a professional opera singer....

, Edith Head

Edith Head

Edith Head was an American costume designer who won eight Academy Awards, more than any other woman.-Early life and career:...

, Gale Storm

Gale Storm

Gale Storm was an American actress and singer who starred in two popular television programs of the 1950s, My Little Margie and The Gale Storm Show.-Early life:...

, Marc Davis, Tony Duquette

Tony Duquette

Tony Duquette was an American artist who specialized in designs for stage and film.-Biography:...

, Harold Grieve

Harold Grieve

Harold Grieve was an motion picture art director and interior designer.Born in Los Angeles, California, he attended Hollywood High School then studied art at the "School of Illustration and Painting" run by John Francis Smith in Los Angeles. In the early 1920s Grieve went to work in the film...

, John Hench

John Hench

John Hench was an employee of The Walt Disney Company for more than sixty-five years, an exceptionally long tenure which saw the rise of nearly every Disney animated feature and theme park....

, Chuck Jones

Chuck Jones

Charles Martin "Chuck" Jones was an American animator, cartoon artist, screenwriter, producer, and director of animated films, most memorably of Looney Tunes and Merrie Melodies shorts for the Warner Bros. Cartoons studio...

, Henry Mancini

Henry Mancini

Henry Mancini was an American composer, conductor and arranger, best remembered for his film and television scores. He won a record number of Grammy Awards , plus a Grammy Lifetime Achievement Award posthumously in 1995...

, Marty Paich

Marty Paich

Martin Louis "Marty" Paich was an American pianist, composer, arranger, producer, music director and conductor....

, Nelson Riddle

Nelson Riddle

Nelson Smock Riddle, Jr. was an American arranger, composer, bandleader and orchestrator whose career stretched from the late 1940s to the mid 1980s...

and Millard Sheets

Millard Sheets

Millard Owen Sheets was an American painter and a representative of the California School of Painting, later a teacher and educational director, and architect of more than 50 branch banks in Southern California.-Early life:...

.

The ground-breaking for CalArts' current campus took place on May 3, 1969. However, construction of the new campus was stifled by torrential rains and labor troubles of every variety, including the earthquake in 1971. So instead, the "new" school began its first year in the buildings of Villa Cabrini Academy, a former Catholic girls' school on the edge of downtown Burbank. CalArts moved to its present campus in the Valencia section of the city of Santa Clarita, California

Santa Clarita, California

Santa Clarita is the fourth largest city in Los Angeles County, California, United States and the twenty-fourth largest city in the state of California. The 2010 US Census reported the city's population grew 16.7% from the year 2000 to 176,320 residents. It is located about northwest of downtown...

in November 1971.

The founding board of trustees originally planned on creating CalArts as a school in an entertainment complex, a destination like Disneyland, and a feeder school for the industry. In an ironic turn of fate, they appointed Dr. Robert W. Corrigan as the first president of the Institute. Corrigan, former dean of the School of Arts at New York University, was attempting to create a similar mix of artistic disciplines as those that were going to be attempted at CalArts. He was joined the following year by his friend Herbert Blau

Herbert Blau

A director and theoretician of performance, Herbert Blau is Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood Professor in the Humanities at the University of Washington...

, hired as the Institute's provost and dean of the School of Theater and Dance. Subsequently, Blau was instrumental in hiring a number of professionals like Mel Powell

Mel Powell

Mel Powell was a jazz pianist and composer of classical music.Mel Epstein was born to Russian Jewish parents, Milton Epstein and Mildred Mark Epstein, and began playing piano as a child. He performed jazz professionally in New York City as a teenager...

(dean of the School of Music), Paul Brach

Paul Brach

Paul Brach, Born March 13, 1924 in New York City and he died November 16, 2007 in Easthampton, New York. Paul Brach was primarily known as an American abstract painter and as a lecturer and educator....

(dean of the School of Art), Alexander Mackendrick

Alexander Mackendrick

Alexander Mackendrick was a Scottish American director and teacher. He was born in Boston, Massachusetts and later moved to Scotland...

(dean of the School of Film/Video), sociologist Maurice Stein (dean of Critical Studies), and Richard Farson

Richard Farson

Richard Farson Ph.D., is a psychologist, author, and educator. He is the president and chief executive officer of the Western Behavioral Sciences Institute, which he co-founded in 1958 with physicist Paul Lloyd and social psychologist Wayman Crow.The non-profit WBSI explores ways in which human...

(dean of the School of Design; now incorporated in the Art school) as well other influential program heads and teachers such as Allan Kaprow

Allan Kaprow

Allan Kaprow was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the "Environment" and "Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well as their theory. His Happenings - some 200 of them - evolved over the years...

, Bella Lewitzky

Bella Lewitzky

Bella Lewitzky was a modern dance choreographer and noted teacher....

, Michael Asher, Jules Engel

Jules Engel

Jules Engel was a Jewish-Hungarian American filmmaker, painter, sculptor, graphic artist, set designer, animator, film director, and teacher...

, John Baldessari

John Baldessari

John Anthony Baldessari is an American conceptual artist known for his work featuring found photography and appropriated images. He lives and works in Santa Monica and Venice, California...

, Judy Chicago

Judy Chicago

Judy Chicago is a feminist artist, author, and educator.Chicago has been creating artwork since the mid 1960s. Her earliest forays into the art world coincided with the rise of Minimalism, which she eventually abandoned in favor of art she believed to have greater content and relevance...

, James Hurtak

James Hurtak

James Hurtak is an American social scientist, comparative religionist, scholar, author, and founder and president of The Academy for Future Science...

, Ravi Shankar

Ravi Shankar

Ravi Shankar , often referred to by the title Pandit, is an Indian musician and composer who plays the plucked string instrument sitar. He has been described as the best known contemporary Indian musician by Hans Neuhoff in Musik in Geschichte und Gegenwart.Shankar was born in Varanasi and spent...

, Max Kozloff

Max Kozloff

Max Kozloff is an American Art Historian, art critic of modern art and photographer. He has been art editor at The Nation, and Executive Editor of Artforum...

, Miriam Shapiro and Douglas Huebler

Douglas Huebler

Douglas Huebler was an American conceptual artist.-Life and career:Douglas Huebler grew up in rural Michigan during the Depression and served in the Marines in World War II...

, most of whom largely came from a counterculture and avant-garde

Avant-garde

Avant-garde means "advance guard" or "vanguard". The adjective form is used in English to refer to people or works that are experimental or innovative, particularly with respect to art, culture, and politics....

side of the art world. The fundamental principles established at the Institute by Blau and the late Corrigan included ideas like “no technique in advance of need,” and that a curriculum should be cyclical rather than sequential, returning to root principles at regular intervals, and that “we’re a community of artists here, some of us called faculty and some called students."

Corrigan held his position until 1972, when he was replaced by William S. Lund, a Disney son-in-law, a Stanford B.A., active in business, real estate, and economic counseling. Later in 1975, Robert J. Fitzpatrick

Robert Fitzpatrick (art executive)

Robert Fitzpatrick is an art academic and executive, entrepreneur and former politician. In 1972, he was elected as Baltimore, Maryland's youngest city council member while also serving as a professor of medieval French literature and dean of students, at Johns Hopkins University. Time Magazine...

is appointed new president of CalArts. Holding this position for twelve years, in 1987
Fitzpatrick resigns as president to head Euro Disney in Paris. Nicholas England, former dean of the School of Music, is appointed acting president. One year later, Steven D. Lavine, associate director for arts and humanities at the Rockefeller Foundation

Rockefeller Foundation

The Rockefeller Foundation is a prominent philanthropic organization and private foundation based at 420 Fifth Avenue, New York City. The preeminent institution established by the six-generation Rockefeller family, it was founded by John D. Rockefeller , along with his son John D. Rockefeller, Jr...

, is named new president, a position still holds.

Beginning in the summer of 1987, CalArts became the host of the state-funded California State Summer School for the Arts

California State Summer School for the Arts

The , commonly known as CSSSA [See-Suh] or InnerSpark, is a four-week, pre-professional art training program for high school student that is held each summer at the California Institute of the Arts . The goal of CSSSA is to provide a supportive environment in which students acquired useful skills...

program. It began by the State of California as a program to nurture talented high school students in the fields of animation

Animation

Animation is the rapid display of a sequence of images of 2-D or 3-D artwork or model positions in order to create an illusion of movement. The effect is an optical illusion of motion due to the phenomenon of persistence of vision, and can be created and demonstrated in several ways...

, creative writing

Creative writing

Creative writing is considered to be any writing, fiction, poetry, or non-fiction, that goes outside the bounds of normal professional, journalistic, academic, and technical forms of literature. Works which fall into this category include novels, epics, short stories, and poems...

, dance

Dance

Dance is an art form that generally refers to movement of the body, usually rhythmic and to music, used as a form of expression, social interaction or presented in a spiritual or performance setting....

, film

Experimental film

Experimental film or experimental cinema is a type of cinema. Experimental film is an artistic practice relieving both of visual arts and cinema. Its origins can be found in European avant-garde movements of the twenties. Experimental cinema has built its history through the texts of theoreticians...

and video

Video art

Video art is a type of art which relies on moving pictures and comprises video and/or audio data. . Video art came into existence during the 1960s and 1970s, is still widely practiced and has given rise to the widespread use of video installations...

, music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

, theatre arts, and visual arts

Visual arts

The visual arts are art forms that create works which are primarily visual in nature, such as ceramics, drawing, painting, sculpture, printmaking, design, crafts, and often modern visual arts and architecture...

. CalArts expanded on the concept by creating the Community Arts Partnership

Community Arts Partnership

The Community Arts Partnership was established in 1990,and is the first program of its kind in the U.S. The program links the California Institute of the Arts to community art centers and public schools throughout Los Angeles County as part of an expanding joint endeavor to provide college-level...

in 1990. While CSSSA is open to qualifying California students, CAP, as it's commonly known, is a service provided to students living within underprivileged communities in the Los Angeles County school system. Many CalArts faculty and students mentor the high schoolstudents in both programs.

Over the years, the school has also developed on-campus, interdisciplinary laboratories, such as the Center for Experiments in Art, Information, and Technology, Center for Integrated Media

Center for Integrated Media

The Center for Integrated Media is a new media arts initiative located within the California Institute of the Arts.Graduate students from any of the CalArts' six schools can enroll "in order to integrate multiple media and disciplines into new forms of expression." The Center is designed as an...

, Center for New Performance at CalArts

Center for New Performance at CalArts

The Center for New Performance is, the professional producing arm of the California Institute of the Arts. It was established in 1999 as a forum for the creation of ground breaking theatrical performance. Originally named the Center for the New Theater, the name was expanded in 2005 to reflect the...

, and the Cotsen Center for Puppetry and the Arts.

In the year 1994, CalArts became affected by the Northridge earthquake. Michael Eisner

Michael Eisner

Michael Dammann Eisner is an American businessman. He was the chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company from 1984 until 2005.-Early life:...

, on the Board of Trustees at the time, directed the real estate team at Disney to find a temporary site for the school. All the art programs were re-located to the Lockheed Rye Canyon Research facility for six months until the school was repaired.

That same year, Herb Alpert

Herb Alpert

Herbert "Herb" Alpert is an American musician most associated with the group variously known as Herb Alpert & the Tijuana Brass, Herb Alpert's Tijuana Brass, or TJB. He is also a recording industry executive — he is the "A" of A&M Records...

, a professional musician and admirer of the institute, collaborated with CalArts with his non-profit foundation to establish the Alpert Awards in the Arts

Alpert Awards in the Arts

The CalArts/Alpert Award in the Arts was established in the 1994 by The Herb Alpert Foundation in collaboration with the California Institute of the Arts . The foundation provides $50,000 annual fellowship to five artists in the field of film and video, visual arts, theatre, dance, and music....

. While the foundation provides the award for winning recipients , the school's faculty in the fields film/new media, visual arts, theatre, dance, and music select artists in their field to nominate an individual artist who is recognized for their innovation in their given medium. Recipients of this award are required to stay for a week as visiting artists at CalArts and mentor students studying their metier. In 2008, CalArts renamed the School of Music in his name, courtesy of a $15 million dollar donation.

In 2003, CalArts established a performance arts theatre in downtown Los Angeles called REDCAT

REDCAT

Opened November 2003, REDCAT is a contemporary arts center that is an extension of CalArts campus, and serves as the professional presenting arm of the Institute...

, the Roy and Edna Disney Cal Arts Theater at Walt Disney Concert Hall. The Center for New Performance, the professional producing arm of the CalArts Theater School, brings works to the space from both student and professional artists and musicians.

Recent developments

In fall 2009, the Institute opened an on-campus music pavilion, known as the "Wild Beast". The 3200 square feet (297.3 m²), free-standing structure will serve as a space for classrooms and combined indoor-outdoor performance space. CalArts President Steven Lavine has stated “The core demand is that our Herb Alpert School of Music has doubled in size in the last decade; when we have guest artists, there is no place for them to perform-And the second reason was to allow enough space for the general public to attend [...]”

Today, the institute has remained funded through the ongoing contributions of Walt Disney

Walt Disney

and his family

Disney family

This page describes the family of Elias Disney , the father of Walter Elias "Walt" Disney.The family name, originally d'Isigny , is of Norman French derivation, coming from the canton of Isigny-sur-Mer. The Disneys, among others, descended from Normans who settled in Normandy around the 11th century...

, who provided funding for the ongoing operation of this school in his will. The campus is located on McBean Parkway, which has a direct connection to Interstate 5

Interstate 5

Interstate 5 is the main Interstate Highway on the West Coast of the United States, running largely parallel to the Pacific Ocean coastline from Canada to Mexico . It serves some of the largest cities on the U.S...

Academics

CalArts offers degree programs in music

Music

Music is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...

, art

Art

Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....

, dance

Contemporary dance

Contemporary dance is a genre of concert dance that employs compositional philosophy, rather than choreography, to guide unchoreographed movement...

, film

Experimental film

and video

Video art

, animation

Animation

, theater, puppetry

Puppetry

Puppetry is a form of theatre or performance which involves the manipulation of puppets. It is very ancient, and is believed to have originated 30,000 years BC. Puppetry takes many forms but they all share the process of animating inanimate performing objects...

, and writing

Creative writing

. Students receive intensive professional training in the area of his/her career purpose without being cast into a rigid pattern. Its focus is in interdisciplinary

Interdisciplinarity

Interdisciplinarity involves the combining of two or more academic fields into one single discipline. An interdisciplinary field crosses traditional boundaries between academic disciplines or schools of thought, as new needs and professions have emerged....

, contemporary art

Contemporary art

Contemporary art can be defined variously as art produced at this present point in time or art produced since World War II. The definition of the word contemporary would support the first view, but museums of contemporary art commonly define their collections as consisting of art produced...

, and the Institute's stated mission is to develop professional artists of tomorrow- artists who will change their field. With these goals in place, the Institute encourages students to recognize the complexity of political, social and aesthetic questions and to respond to them with informed, independent judgment.

Admissions

Admissions to CalArts is based solely on the applicant's creative talent and future potential. Every school within the Institute does require that applicants send in a artist's statement

Artist's Statement

An artist's statement is a brief verbal representation created by the artist about his or her own work.-Content:...

, along with a portfolio

Career portfolio

Career portfolios are used to plan, organize and document education, work samples and skills. People use career portfolios to apply to jobs, apply to college or training programs, get a higher salary, show transferable skills, and to track personal development. They are more in-depth than a resume,...

or audition (depending on the program) in order to be considered for admission. The school does not review an applicant's SAT

SAT

The SAT Reasoning Test is a standardized test for college admissions in the United States. The SAT is owned, published, and developed by the College Board, a nonprofit organization in the United States. It was formerly developed, published, and scored by the Educational Testing Service which still...

scores without consent, and does not consider an applicant's GPA as part of the admission process.

Disney's vision

The initial concept behind CalArts' interdisciplinary approach came from Richard Wagner

Richard Wagner

Wilhelm Richard Wagner was a German composer, conductor, theatre director, philosopher, music theorist, poet, essayist and writer primarily known for his operas...

's idea of Gesamtkunstwerk

Gesamtkunstwerk

A Gesamtkunstwerk is a work of art that makes use of all or many art forms or strives to do so...

("total artwork"), which Disney himself was fond of and explored in a variety of forms, beginning with his own studio, then later in the incorporation of CalArts. He began with the classic Disney film Fantasia
Fantasia (film)
Fantasia is a 1940 American animated film produced by Walt Disney and released by Walt Disney Productions. The third feature in the Walt Disney Animated Classics series, the film consists of eight animated segments set to pieces of classical music conducted by Leopold Stokowski, seven of which are...

(1940), where animators, dancers, composers, and artists alike collaborated together. In 1952, Walt Disney Imagineering

Walt Disney Imagineering

Walt Disney Imagineering is the design and development arm of the Walt Disney Company, responsible for the creation and construction of Disney theme parks worldwide...

was founded, where Disney integrated artists from his animation studio and elsewhere, as well as formally-trained engineers and achieved creative critical mass in the development of Disneyland

Disneyland Park (Anaheim)

Disneyland Park is a theme park located in Anaheim, California, owned and operated by the Walt Disney Parks and Resorts division of the Walt Disney Company. Known as Disneyland when it opened on July 18, 1955, and still almost universally referred to by that name, it is the only theme park to be...

. He believed that the same concept that developed WDI, could also be applied to a university setting, where art students of different mediums would be exposed to and explore a wide-range of creative directions. Disney himself has stated of his memorial school:

Programs

Schools and degree programs available at CalArts include:

School of Art: Fine Arts, Graphic Design, Photography and Media

School of Critical Studies: MFA Writing, MA in Aesthetics and Politics

The Sharon Disney Lund School of Dance: BFA and MFA

School of Film/Video: Film and Video, Experimental Animation, Character Animation (BFA), Film Directing (MFA)

The Herb Alpert School of Music: DMA Composer-Performer, Composition, Composition for New Media/Experimental Sound Practices (ESP) (MFA), Performer/Composer, Performer/Composer: African American, Improvisational Music (MFA), Music Technology (BFA and MFA), Performance, Musical Arts (BFA), World Music (BFA and MFA)

School of Theater: Acting, Directing (MFA), Writing for Performance (MFA), Puppetry (MFA), Design and Production: Costume Design, Lighting Design, Producing (MFA), Stage Management, Production Management (MFA), Scene Design, Sound Design, Video for Performance (MFA), Technical Direction, Scenic Painting, (MFA).

Notable alumni, faculty, and visiting artists

List of California Institute of the Arts people

Honorary Degrees

CalArts confers honorary Doctor of Arts degrees to artists who have consistently represented the bold innovation and visionary creativity championed by the Institute, and who have each made extraordinary contributions to contemporary arts and culture. A list of past honorary degree recipients, include: Beverly Sills

Beverly Sills

Beverly Sills was an American operatic soprano whose peak career was between the 1950s and 1970s. In her prime she was the only real rival to Joan Sutherland as the leading bel canto stylist...

(1975), Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein

Roy Lichtenstein was a prominent American pop artist. During the 1960s his paintings were exhibited at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City and along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, James Rosenquist and others he became a leading figure in the new art movement...

(1977), Twyla Tharp

Twyla Tharp

Twyla Tharp is an American dancer and choreographer, who lives and works in New York City.-Early years:Tharp was born in 1941 on a farm in Portland, Indiana, and was named after Twila Thornburg, the "Pig Princess" of the 89th Annual Muncie Fair in Indiana.she spend hours working on it to help her...

(1978), Gordon Davidson

Gordon Davidson

Gordon Davidson is an American stage- and film director.-External links:...

(1980) Haskell Wexler

Haskell Wexler

Haskell Wexler, A.S.C. is an American cinematographer, film producer, and director. Wexler was judged to be one of film history's ten most influential cinematographers in a survey of the members of the International Cinematographers Guild.-Early life and education:Wexler was born to a Jewish...

(1981) Mischa Schneider (1981), Bella Lewitzky

Bella Lewitzky

Bella Lewitzky was a modern dance choreographer and noted teacher....

(1981), Henry Mancini

Henry Mancini

(1983), Jan de Gaetani (1983), Ravi Shankar

Ravi Shankar

(1985), John Cage

John Cage

John Milton Cage Jr. was an American composer, music theorist, writer, philosopher and artist. A pioneer of indeterminacy in music, electroacoustic music, and non-standard use of musical instruments, Cage was one of the leading figures of the post-war avant-garde...

(1986), Frank O. Gehry (1987), Trisha Brown

Trisha Brown

Trisha Brown is a postmodernist American choreographer and dancer.Brown was born in Aberdeen, Washington, and received a B.A. degree in dance from Mills College in 1958. Brown later received a D.F.A. from Bates College in 2000. For several summers she studied with Louis Horst at the American Dance...

(1988), Donn B. Tatum (1989), Luis Valdez

Luis Valdez

Luis Valdez is an American playwright, writer and film director.He is regarded as the father of Chicano theater in the United States.-Education:...

(1989), Paul Taylor (1989), Ornette Coleman

Ornette Coleman

Ornette Coleman is an American saxophonist, violinist, trumpeter and composer. He was one of the major innovators of the free jazz movement of the 1960s....

(1990), Beatrice Manley (1990), Lulu May Von Hagen (1990), Ustad Ali Akbar Khan (1991), Pearl Primus

Pearl Primus

Pearl Primus was a dancer, choreographer and anthropologist. Primus played an important role in the presentation of African dance to American audiences. Early in her career she saw the needs to promote African dance as an art form worthy of study and performance...

(1991), Adrian Piper

Adrian Piper

Adrian Margaret Smith Piper is a first-generation conceptual artist and analytic philosopher who was born in New York City and lived for many years on Cape Cod, Massachusetts before emigrating from the United States...

(1992), Ray Bradbury

Ray Bradbury

Ray Douglas Bradbury is an American fantasy, horror, science fiction, and mystery writer. Best known for his dystopian novel Fahrenheit 451 and for the science fiction stories gathered together as The Martian Chronicles and The Illustrated Man , Bradbury is one of the most celebrated among 20th...

(1992), Yvonne Rainer

Yvonne Rainer

Yvonne Rainer is an American dancer, choreographer and filmmaker, whose work in these disciplines is frequently challenging and experimental. Her work is classified as minimalist art.- Early life :...

(1993), Steven Bochco

Steven Bochco

Steven Ronald Bochco is a US television producer and writer. He has developed a number of popular television hits including Hill Street Blues, L.A. Law, and NYPD Blue, as well as some notable flops such as Cop Rock....

(1993), Stan Brakhage

Stan Brakhage

James Stanley Brakhage , better known as Stan Brakhage, was an American non-narrative filmmaker who is considered to be one of the most important figures in 20th century experimental film....

(1994), Vija Celmins

Vija Celmins

Vija Celmins is an American artist.-Early life:Vija Celmins immigrated to the United States with her family from Latvia when she was ten years old. She and her family settled in Indiana...

(1994), Betye Saar

Betye Saar

Betye Irene Saar is an American artist, known for her work in the field of assemblage. Her education included a time at the University of California, Los Angeles, from where she received a degree in design in 1949, and graduate studies in printmaking and education at Pasadena City College,...

(1995), Carolyn Forche

Carolyn Forché

Carolyn Forché is an American poet, editor, translator, and human rights advocate.-Life:Forché was born in Detroit, Michigan, on April 28, 1950, to Michael Joseph and Louise Nada Blackford Sidlosky. Forché earned a B.A...

(1995), Laurie Anderson

Laurie Anderson

Laura Phillips "Laurie" Anderson is an American experimental performance artist, composer and musician who plays violin and keyboards and sings in a variety of experimental music and art rock styles. Initially trained as a sculptor, Anderson did her first performance-art piece in the late 1960s...

(1996), Elvin Jones

Elvin Jones

Elvin Ray Jones was a jazz drummer of the post-bop era. He showed interest in drums at a young age, watching the circus bands march by his family's home in Pontiac, Michigan....

(1996), Chantal Akerman

Chantal Akerman

Chantal Anne Akerman is a Belgian film director, artist, and professor of film at the European Graduate School. Akerman's best-known film, Jeanne Dielman, 23 quai du Commerce, 1080 Bruxelles , exemplifies a dedication to the ellipses of conventional narrative cinema.-Early life:Akerman was born to...

(1997), Lee Breuer

Lee Breuer

Lee Breuer is an American academic, educator, film maker, poet, lyricist, writer and stage director.-Work with Mabou Mines:Lee Breuer is a founding artistic director of Mabou Mines Theater Company in New York City, which he began in 1970 with colleagues Philip Glass, Ruth Maleczech, JoAnne...

(1998), Ed Ruscha (1999), Bill Viola

Bill Viola

Bill Viola is a contemporary video artist. He is considered a leading figure in the generation of artists whose artistic expression depends upon electronic, sound, and image technology in New Media...

(2000), Steve Reich

Steve Reich

Stephen Michael "Steve" Reich is an American composer who together with La Monte Young, Terry Riley, and Philip Glass is a pioneering composer of minimal music...

(2000), Ry Cooder

Ry Cooder

Ryland Peter "Ry" Cooder is an American guitarist, singer and composer. He is known for his slide guitar work, his interest in roots music from the United States, and, more recently, his collaborations with traditional musicians from many countries.His solo work has been eclectic, encompassing...

(2001), Faith Hubley

Faith Hubley

Faith Hubley was an animator, known for her experimental work both in collaboration with her husband John Hubley, and on her own following her husband's death.-Biography:...

(2001), Bruce Nauman

Bruce Nauman

Bruce Nauman is a contemporary American artist. His practice spans a broad range of media including sculpture, photography, neon, video, drawing, printmaking, and performance. Nauman lives in Galisteo, New Mexico....

(2001), Alice Coltrane

Alice Coltrane

Alice Coltrane, née McLeod was an American jazz pianist, organist, harpist, and composer.-Biography:...

(2002), Roy E. Disney

Roy E. Disney

Roy Edward Disney, KCSG was a longtime senior executive for The Walt Disney Company, which his father Roy Oliver Disney and his uncle Walt Disney founded. At the time of his death he was a shareholder , and served as a consultant for the company and Director Emeritus for the Board of Directors...

(2003), Anna Halprin

Anna Halprin

Anna Halprin helped pioneer the experimental art form known as postmodern dance and referred to herself as the breaker of modern dance. Halprin, along with her contemporaries such as Trisha Brown, Simone Forti, Yvonne Rainer, John Cage, and Robert Morris, collaborated and built a community based...

(2003), Carolee Schneemann

Carolee Schneemann

Carolee Schneemann is an American visual artist, known for her discourses on the body, sexuality and gender. She received a B.A. from Bard College and an M.F.A. from the University of Illinois. Her work is primarily characterized by research into visual traditions, taboos, and the body of the...

(2003), Christian Wolff

Christian Wolff (composer)

Christian G. Wolff is an American composer of experimental classical music.-Biography:Wolff was born in Nice in France to German literary publishers Helen and Kurt Wolff, who had published works by Franz Kafka, Robert Musil, and Walter Benjamin. After relocating to the U.S...

(2004), Daniel Nagrin

Daniel Nagrin

Daniel Nagrin was an American modern dancer, choreographer, teacher, and author. He was born in New York City.Nagrin studied with Martha Graham, Anna Sokolow, Hanya Holm, and Helen Tamiris whom he later married...

(2004), James Newton

James Newton

James W. Newton is an American jazz flautist, composer, and conductor.-Biography:From his earliest years, James Newton grew up immersed in the sounds of African American music, including urban blues, rhythm and blues, and gospel. In his early teens he played electric bass guitar, alto saxophone,...

(2005), Harrison “Buzz” Price

Harrison Price

Harrison Alan "Buzz" Price was a research economist specializing in how people spend their leisure time and resources...

(2005), Julius Shulman

Julius Shulman

Julius Shulman was an American architectural photographer best known for his photograph "Case Study House #22, Los Angeles, 1960. Pierre Koenig, Architect." The house is also known as The Stahl House. Shulman's photography spread California Mid-century modern around the world...

(2005), Rudy VanderLans

Rudy VanderLans

Rudy VanderLans is a Dutch type and graphic designer and the co-founder of Emigre, an independent type foundry.VanderLans studied at the Royal Academy of Art in the Hague. Later, he moved to California and studied photography at the University of California, Berkeley...

(2006), Rudy Perez (2006), Alonzo King

Alonzo King

Alonzo King is an American dancer and choreographer working in San Francisco, California. He is known for founding a contemporary ballet company, Alonzo King LINES Ballet, in 1982....

(2007), Harry Belafonte

Harry Belafonte

Harold George "Harry" Belafonte, Jr. is an American singer, songwriter, actor and social activist. He was dubbed the "King of Calypso" for popularizing the Caribbean musical style with an international audience in the 1950s...

(2008), Herbert Blau

Herbert Blau

A director and theoretician of performance, Herbert Blau is Byron W. and Alice L. Lockwood Professor in the Humanities at the University of Washington...

(2008), Terry Riley

Terry Riley

Terrence Mitchell Riley, is an American composer intrinsically associated with the minimalist school of Western classical music and was a pioneer of the movement...

(2008), Elizabeth LeCompte

Elizabeth LeCompte

Elizabeth LeCompte is a founding member and the theater director of experimental theater collective The Wooster Group .-Biography:...

(2009), Morton Subotnick

Morton Subotnick

Morton Subotnick is an American composer of electronic music, best known for his Silver Apples of the Moon, the first electronic work commissioned by a record company, Nonesuch...

(2009), William M. Lowman

Idyllwild Arts Foundation

Idyllwild Arts Foundation encompasses two institutions in Idyllwild, California for training in the arts: the Idyllwild Arts Academy and the Idyllwild Arts Summer Program...

(2010)Trimpin

Trimpin

Trimpin is a Seattle, Washington-based kinetic sculptor, sound artist, musician, and composer, most of whose pieces integrate both sculpture and music in some way, and many of which make use of computers to play these instruments...

(2010), Annette Bening

Annette Bening

Annette Carol Bening is an American actress. Bening is a four-time Oscar nominee for her roles in The Grifters, American Beauty, Being Julia and The Kids Are All Right, winning Golden Globe Awards for the latter two films...

(2011), and Donald McKayle

Donald McKayle

Donald McKayle is an African American modern dancer, choreographer, teacher, director and writer best known for creating socially conscious concert works during the 1950s and 60s that focus on expressing the human condition and more specifically, the black experience in America...

(2011).

External links

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