Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts

The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts is a collaborative force based at the University of Houston. The Mitchell Center invites leading artists and creative thinkers from throughout the world to the UH campus to show their work, develop new projects, lead workshops, and teach courses. The Mitchell Center commissions and produces new works across the visual, performing, and literary arts.

The center was founded in 2003 and forms an alliance among five departments at University of Houston: the School of Art, the Moores School of Music, the School of Theatre and Dance, the Creative Writing Program, and the Blaffer Art Museum.

History

The Mitchell Center was founded in fall 2003 uniting the arts programs on the University of Houston campus. The Mitchell Center was founded with a contribution from philanthropist and business man, George P. Mitchell, with the desire to impact the creative arts programs at University of Houston. The Center was named in honor of his late wife, Cynthia Woods Mitchell, a strong lover of the arts.

An endowment of $20 million was given to support the Center, with $16 million designated for the programs and $4 million to renovate the School of Theatre and Dance facility. The renovation included creating new studios, a lobby for the Wortham Theatre, and offices for the newly established Mitchell Center. In December 2005, Karen Farber was hired as the first full-time director.

Residences and special projects

Mitchell Center invites artists for inter-disciplinary residencies on a semester basis. Projects can be research based, public art, academic, or part of a larger thematic initiative.

Past artists include:

Terry & Jo Harvey Allen

Philip Glass

Liz Lerman

ETHEL

Fritz Haeg

Big Dance Theater

The Art Guys

Ronald K. Brown

Negativland

Dick Hebdige

Mark Doty

Joan Tower

Center for Land Use Interpretation

Marc Bamuthi Joseph

SIMPARCH

Jeremy Deller

Education and the Interdisciplinary Art minor (IART)

In 2008, the Mitchell Center created a new minor called the Interdisciplinary Arts Minor (IART), which is available to UH students from all colleges and majors. IART courses are each sponsored by two or more UH departments and taught by a range of faculty and visiting scholars and practitioners. The minor includes academic study in the historic & contemporary examples of interdisciplinary arts and provides opportunities for students of all majors and academic fields to engage in interdisciplinary projects, utilizing the funding & resources of the Mitchell Center.

Mitchell Center also supports an annual Curatorial Fellowship position at Blaffer Art Museum and offers annual scholarships to graduate students who are interested in cross-disciplinary collaboration and who are studying in the fields of Art, Creative Writing, Music, and Theatre.

The Mitchell Center also hosts a series of lectures and conversations with renowned visitors (artists, writers, choreographers, academics, and musicians) to discuss how collaboration has influenced their artistic development. These conversations are meant to encourage communication about cross-disciplinary works and promote deeper engagement and exploration.

In 2007, the Mitchell Center developed the Faculty Affiliate Network (FAN) to connect the arts with other areas of the UH campus. FAN is meant to create direct communication between visual artists, performers, and writers and colleagues of the UH faculty and staff for collaboration, dialogue, and sharing of expertise.

See also

* Lacy M. Johnson

References

External links

Official Web Site

{{Coord, 29, 43, 29, N, 95, 20, 33, W, type:landmark_scale:10000_region:US, display=title

University of Houston campus
Culture of Houston
Music of Houston
Organizations based in Houston
Non-profit organizations based in Houston
2003 establishments in Texas