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Reflections and Anticipation

UCLA’s arts and culture landscape of 2022 revealed moments of connection and reinvention.

UCLA arts and culture highlights from the past year and the year ahead. Cracks of light broke through the ongoing pandemic, allowing students, staff, faculty and the public to return to campus for work, study and enlivening experiences that confronted the challenges of the past several years while navigating ever optimistically forward into the unknown and unknowable.

What’s certain is that there is abundance ahead in 2023, including truly exciting new visual and performing arts venues, expanded program offerings and points of collaboration.

Read on for a look back and look forward at highlights from the entities that continually enrich our community through arts and culture programs.  

SCHOOL OF THE ARTS AND ARCHITECTURE

Spring 2022 marked two large-scale art installations from alumni and faculty from the School of the Arts and Architecture. Design Media Arts alum and multimedia artist Refik Anadol created “Machine Simulations: Nature,” an 18-foot by 18-foot artificial intelligence-powered data sculpture that displayed wavelike forms shape-shifting into explosions of brilliant colors dancing to the sounds of the sea. Installed in the campus’s Franklin D. Murphy Sculpture Garden, the work drew thousands of visitors over the course of five nights, offering a mesmerizing and meditative experience designed to inspire viewers to contemplate how COVID-19 had affected their lives.

The piece was presented in collaboration with UCLA Strategic Communications and recently Event Marketer magazine honored UCLA with gold in the Best Pandemic-era Design category from the publication’s 2022 Experience Design & Technology Awards.

In 2022 UCLA unveiled a new permanent installation commissioned from famed Chicana muralist Judith Baca and emeritus faculty. Her “La Memoria de la Tierra: UCLA” celebrates the history of UCLA and reminds all who see it to reflect on our relationship to the Earth and the first peoples of Los Angeles. View this remarkable piece on the second-floor Wescom Terrace on the south side of Ackerman Union.

The team from cityLAB, led by Architecture and Urban Design professor Dana Cuff celebrated the progress of Assembly Bill No. 2295: Education Workforce Housing Development. Co-authored by Cuff and her team and signed into law in September, the bill streamlines the development of affordable and mixed-income housing for teachers and support staff of California’s K-12 public schools on public land, opening opportunities for up to 2.3 million units of housing statewide.

UCLA Arts faculty continue to teach, create, iterate and represent their various fields. Just one example is Rebecca Mendez, Design Media Arts professor and chair whose current exhibition “The Sea Around Us” is on view until Feb. 5, 2023 at the Laguna Art Museum. Mendez transports viewers to the Pacific Ocean seafloor, to witness the environmental impact of human wrongdoing by way of images of thousands of oozing barrels of DDT. Her challenge to us is to find the courage required for restorative action and an end to human transgressions against the ocean and our natural world. “The Sea Around Us” is supported in part by a UCLA Chancellor’s Council Arts Initiative grant.

Meanwhile, the three public units that are part of UCLA’s School of the Arts and Architecture (the Hammer Museum, Fowler Museum and Center for the Art of Performance) returned to in-person events in 2022. And all have ambitions plans ahead for 2023.

HAMMER MUSEUM

This year marked the first full slate of exhibitions and in-person public programs at the Hammer Museum since the pandemic began, with major retrospectives for groundbreaking video artist Ulysses Jenkins and multihyphenate artist/environmental justice activist Andrea Bowers.

There’s still time to catch the museum’s ambitious, inventive exhibitions Picasso Cut Papers, which runs through Dec. 31 and Joan Didion: What She Means, on view through February 19.

In 2022 the Hammer also added a brand-new gallery and study center dedicated to the museum’s vast Grunwald Collection of works on paper and made major renovations to the Hammer Store. The new restaurant Lulu, led by chefs Alice Waters and David Tanis, came into its own after opening in late 2021.

Looking forward, on Sunday March 26, 2023 Hammer visitors will experience the results of a two-decade-long project to expand, renovate and transform the museum’s physical spaces, with the opening of the Lynda and Stewart Resnick Cultural Center. A new street-level entrance on the corner of Wilshire and Westwood boulevards welcomes visitors to a dramatic community presence across a full city block, debuting a spacious new lobby, new gallery spaces and an outdoor sculpture garden, all beautifully designed by Michael Maltzan Architecture.

In 2023, be on the lookout for showcases of never-before-seen works from the Hammer Contemporary Collections as well as several large-scale installations in these new and revitalized spaces. These include work from Japanese artist Chiharu Shiota, a 25-foot bronze sculpture from interdisciplinary artist and cultural activist Sanford Biggers. Opening Feb. 5 is a bold retrospective exhibition of British abstract painter Bridget Riley’s drawings. Admission to the Hammer Museum is always free.

FOWLER MUSEUM

UCLA’s home for global arts and cultures, with an emphasis on Africa, Asia, the Pacific, and the Indigenous Americas welcomed Sylvia Forni as the new Shirley and Ralph Shapiro director of the Fowler Museum. Forni most recently served as deputy vice president of the Royal Ontario Museum’s Department of Art & Culture and senior curator of global Africa.

Currently on view at the Fowler is the first-ever major exhibition of its astonishing collection “asafo flags” of Ghana, which date back to the 17th century as a form of both cultural expression and militarism. The Fowler is home to the largest single permanent collection of these fascinating works of textile art, which offer a lens into the history and culture of pre-and post-Colonial Africa. “Art, Honor, and Ridicule: Fante Asafo Flags from Southern Ghana” runs through Feb. 12. Fowler admission is always free.

In 2023, the Fowler marks its 60th year as a UCLA cultural institution, and will highlight several UCLA alumni in forthcoming exhibitions.

Opening Jan. 29 is “The Fallacy of Borders” the first solo Los Angeles museum presentation of Iranian-American artist Amir H. Fallah. More than 25 works span painting, sculpture, stained glass, and textile art, speaking to the immigrant experience in America and traversing themes of power and belonging. 

CENTER FOR THE ART OF PERFORMANCE

UCLA’s public performing arts presenter marked the year with not only a return to live performance but a return to togetherness, with several programs that blurred the lines between artist and audience.

Most recently, famed choreographer Bill T. Jones and the Bill T. Jones/Arnie Zane company brought to the stage the West Coast Premiere of “What Problem?” a unique work that included members of the Los Angeles community cast to perform alongside company dancers as they collectively deconstructed text from Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.'s "I Have a Dream" speech and Herman Melville's “Moby Dick.”

Earlier in the Fall, CAP’s presentation of theater duo 600 Highwaymen with “A Thousand Ways (Part Three): An Assembly,” created a timely, intimate and interactive theatrical experience, involving an audience of 16 participants to create a private performance from a shared script. 600 Highwaymen return to Royce Hall in February.

In Fall 2023 CAP will open the doors to UCLA’s newest performing arts venue, The Nimoy.

UCLA’s purchase of the long-dormant but beloved Crest theater on Westwood Boulevard was made possible by major gifts from actor, writer and director Susan Bay Nimoy, and an anonymous donor. It will be named in honor of the late Leonard Nimoy, a staunch supporter of the arts at UCLA.

Stay tuned for more details and purchase tickets to all CAP UCLA performances online.

HERB ALPERT SCHOOL OF MUSIC

Angel Blue, the soprano superstar who recently headlined the LA Opera’s production of Tosca, performed an intimate recital before a near-capacity crowd in Schoenberg Hall on November 21. In a concert that mixed Late Romantic songs by Richard Strauss and African American spirituals, Blue dazzled the audience with her powerful and sonorous interpretations. It was her first recital in Los Angeles in over fifteen years, and she chose Schoenberg Hall as her stage. It was a homecoming for Blue, who earned her master’s in vocal performance from the UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music in 2008.

Blue returned to her Alma Mater the following day to conduct a public masterclass. Ever generous, Blue spent nearly three hours with vocal students in the School of Music. After working intensely with three singers (two master’s students and one undergraduate), Blue took questions from the students in attendance.

A major highlight of the coming year is “The Gates of Justice,” jazz legend Dave Brubeck’s rarely presented large-scale sacred composition.  On Feb. 26 in Royce Hall, Brubeck’s sons will perform as the accompanying jazz trio in a program that features six recent and socially conscious works by contemporary composers, including six-time Grammy-winning pianist, composer, and music educator Arturo O’Farrill. A second performance of the entire program takes place on Feb. 28 at Holman United Methodist Church. In between the two performances there will be a daylong public conference featuring prominent scholars and experts exploring the historical and cultural connections of Black and Jewish communities in the United States, intimate analyses of Brubeck’s “Gates of Justice,” and the contemporary relevance of music to social justice. 

A second part to the school’s Music and Justice series will take place in May, with the west coast premiere of a beautiful and timely composition to continue the conversation about the role that music plays in calling for and bringing about justice in our world.

SCHOOL OF THEATER FILM AND TELEVISION

Musical Theater student Paravi was a featured performer on Baz Luhrmann's “Elvis” soundtrack, released in June. Academy Award-winning star of “Coda,” deaf actor Troy Kotsur was the keynote speaker at the UCLA School of Theater, Film and Television’s 2022 commencement.

In a special treat for students of Amy Villarejo, chair of the Film, Television and Digital Media department, alum Gina Prince-Bythewood visited campus to screen her most recent film, the critically acclaimed “The Woman King,” sharing her experience creating this powerful film about Black women’s lived experiences and offering words of wisdom for current students.

In 2023, the theater department is looking ahead toward several points of interdepartmental collaboration, including “Quake” by Kay Rhie and “Les Mamelles Les mamelles de Tirésias” by Francis Poulenc, directed by Mary Birnbaum, both presentations of Opera UCLA, an ongoing collaboration with the Herb Alpert School of Music.

The theater department will also raise awareness of original plays by women and Black playwrights/directors with “Anna Watts,” directed by Alana Dietze andMalick Ceesay,” directed by Bruce Lemon Jr., respectively. More information and tickets to UCLA department of theater events are available here.

FILM & TELEVISION ARCHIVE

The UCLA Film & Television Archive presented the start of a landmark retrospective, Pioneers of Queer Cinema co-presented with IndieCollect, and Outfest. And for the 2022 UCLA Festival of Preservation (the 20th edition) renowned film critic Kenneth Turan said: “No movie event in Los Angeles has excited me more than this one.”

The archive also celebrated the legendary Greek writer-director Landscapes of Time: The Films of Theo Angelopoulos, a collaboration with the UCLA Stavros Niarchos Foundation Center for the Study of Hellenic Culture and the UCLA Center for European and Russian Studies.

In March, the Archive is delighted to partner with the Hammer Museum in presenting works by visionary artist Cauleen Smith — In Space, In Time. Opening in June to illuminate Native filmmakers’ path-breaking work, the Archive will present Imagining Indigenous Cinema: New Voices, New Vision. Archive curators are also working on forthcoming series dedicated to BIPOC filmmakers.

INSTITUTE OF AMERICAN CULTURES/ DIVISION OF SOCIAL SCIENCES

Did you know that UCLA is home to one of the longest-running Pow Wows in the country? This cultural event is entirely produced and run by students from UCLA’s American Indian Studies Department and brings Native and Indigenous families, artists and dancers to campus for several days of regalia, traditional songs and performance. After a multi-year hiatus, the event returned, bringing nearly 3,000 thousand visitors, many traveling from outside California. Pow Wow will return in April 2023.

March 2022 saw the launch of the Hip Hop Initiative from the Ralph J Bunche Center for African American Studies featuring inaugural artist in residence Chuck D who visited campus weekly throughout Spring for series of thought-provoking student workshops.

In June 2023, the American Indian Studies Center will launch a six-night in-person and live-streamed film series, "Imagining Indigenous Cinema: New Voices, New Visions," created in partnership with the Film & Television Archive. Screenings, panel discussions, conversations with filmmakers, and other community engagement events that center the work of Native artists and Native experiences will be streamed online and with live events held at two locations in Los Angeles— the Billy Wilder Theater on UCLA’s campus in Westwood, on Los Angeles’ Westside, and at a new theater run by the non-profit Vidiots Foundation in the Eagle Rock neighborhood, on Los Angeles’ Eastside. 

DIVISION OF HUMANITIES

One of the arts highlights from the Humanities Division of the UCLA College of Letters and Science is a unique exhibition of art and memory created and presented by UCLA’s Yanai Initiative for Globalizing Japanese Humanities, a joint project of UCLA and Japan’s Waseda University, in collaboration with the Los Angeles Japanese American Museum.

“BeHere / 1942: A New Lens on the Japanese American Incarceration,” opened May 7 and runs through Jan. 8

It is a thought-provoking and often heartbreaking exercise in the power of art to instigate empathy and awareness. An exhibition of photographs and personal archives from people who lived through the executive order that displaced more than 100,000 people of Japanese heritage to incarceration camps during World War II is complemented by a groundbreaking public augmented reality installation in the plaza between the M\museum’s main campus and the historic Nishi Hongwanji Buddhist Temple. A dedicated BeHere / 1942 app lets visitors step into the past, and walk among Japanese Americans on the verge of leaving for the camps.

INTERNATIONAL INSTITUTE

UCLA’s International Institute, home to more than two dozen centers that foster curriculum and research also annually curates a robust slate of programming highlighting writers, filmmakers, visual and performance artists from around the world, placing their work in cultural perspective.

Some of this year’s highlights included a series of screenings and Q&A sessions with filmmakers from China, Latin America, India and South Asia, a virtual webinar series on the literature of Afghanistan, conversations with Russian and Ukrainian authors and musicians, a concert in Royce Hall from Korean traditional vocalist Lee Hee-moon and more.

Looking ahead the institute already has a series of globally focused arts-centric programs on the calendar, including a screening of “Mouth Harp in Minor Key; Hamid Naficy in/on Exile,” presented Feb. 16 as part of “The Iranian Diaspora in Global Perspective” conference on campus. The documentary from Iranian-American photographer/filmmaker Maryam Seperhi is a meditation on global identity.