Celebrating 50 years

Wesleyan University’s Center for the Arts (CFA) starts a celebration of its 50th anniversary this month. The 2023–24 season features live performances and exhibitions that reflect on the history of the center while also bringing new artists and works to campus.

The Center for the Arts is both a complex of eleven buildings, designed by Kevin Roche/John Dinkeloo and Associates, and an initiative of Wesleyan University that centers artist-led interdisciplinary projects. Inaugurated in 1973, the CFA incubates new modes of practicing beyond disciplinary boundaries, bringing artists together with practitioners from a variety of fields, and drawing on the University’s renowned curriculum in experimental and traditional arts from across the world.

In the years ahead, the CFA will reinvest in prioritizing artist-led initiatives. As Joshua Lubin-Levy ’06, Director of the Center for the Arts, describes, that “means meeting artists where they are, in the current of their own practice, and with a commitment to becoming an organization that continually transforms itself to meet the needs of artists today rather than the other way around.” The Center for the Arts is a haven for artists unbound by disciplinary convention, a campus resource for integrating art across the curriculum, and a cornerstone of Wesleyan’s commitment to the potential of art to transform the way one knows and shapes the world.

Highlights of the 2023 fall season include a 50th Birthday Party featuring an outdoor concert by Sunny Jain’s “Wild Wild East” and including work by Deborah Goffe MA ’19, Trisha Brown, Merce Cunningham, and John Cage; an exhibition by artist Renée Green ’81; the United States premiere of “L’Onde” by Compagnie Nacera Belaza; and a series of site-specific performances curated by Visiting Assistant Professor of Music Ethan Philbrick and featuring Brandon Lopez and Cecilia Lopez MA ’16, Jeremy Toussaint-Baptiste, Narcissister, and Justin Wong.

To learn more about upcoming programs and to stay in touch with the Center for the Arts, visit the website to sign up for the CFA e-mail newsletter. 

Center for the Arts 50th Birthday Party: September 23, 2–5pm, Free and open to the public. Includes a series of arts activities that are curated by the CFA’s student interns. Rain location is Crowell Concert Hall, 50 Wyllys Avenue, Middletown, Connecticut.

No Title: Relays + Relations: September 26–December 3, featuring works by Renée Green and Sol LeWitt. Opening reception Tuesday, September 26, 2023.

Compagnie Nacera Belaza: L’Onde: October 13–14, US premiere. Co-presented by the Villa Albertine, the Walker Art Center, and RedCat. Location: CFA Theater, 271 Washington Terrace, Middletown, Connecticut.

Ethan Philbrick’s “Instrument-Body” series: October 20–December 8, a series of performances presented in conjunction with the seminar of the same name.