Strategic Working Groups

When Is Art Research || 2006

How might the arts provide a way of activating the goals of a “public humanities?” How might the arts provide an infrastructure for new engagements between the university and its community? The group discussed the methods of campus initiatives involving collaboration between art practitioners and other members of the university community. The mission of the group was to develop a response to broad institutional questions regarding the role of the arts in the university. One goal was to develop a document that identifies appropriate mechanisms for evaluating the profile of the research/artist. Most importantly, the group would identify how art-making enacts the collaborative goals of some of the most innovative humanist projects being developed today.

As part of its investigations, the group coordinated a year-long series of related public events, starting with a talk organized by the Townsend/Mellon Discovery Fellows, Art Practice and the Academy: A Roundtable with Dick Hebdige.

About the Group Members

Organized by Shannon Jackson (departments of Rhetoric and Theater, Dance, and Performance Studies) and Raveevarn Choksombatchai (Department of Architecture/ Loom Studio), the group included David Bithell (Townsend Postdoctoral Fellow in Music), Anne Cheng (Department of English), Jeffrey Skoller (Department of Rhetoric-Film Studies), Kate van Orden (Department of Music), Anne Wagner (Department of Art History), and Lisa Wymore (Department of Theater, Dance and Performance Studies).