Redrawing Duke arts

All areas of the arts at Duke are reporting a renaissance of regard from professors and audience members alike.

Melanie Ragland stood alone on stage wearing sparkly shoes. She looked around the empty stage and heard the first strains to her big solo in The Wiz. As Dorothy, that was her cue.

“Think of home,” she told herself. Then she sang, gazing out into the vast theater.

But Ragland, Trinity ’04, was not just talking to herself last October. Nor was she performing to a measly smattering of friends and family. She was singing to a packed house.

As recently as six years ago, sold-out shows were a fantasy for Hoof ‘n’ Horn, Duke’s student-run musical theater group. But in the past few years, attendance at its productions has surged. The Wiz was standing-room-only at seven out of 10 shows last year.

It is not just attendance that is climbing, said sophomore Josh Posen, who will produce the group’s fall show. “Our image is definitely coming up. I think it really has to do with the interest and the dedication of the people. We’re getting a lot of actual theater people.”

The student group is not alone. All areas of the arts at Duke are reporting a renaissance of regard from performers and audience members alike. This year a subsidy from the Office of the Provost reduced student ticket prices to $5 for most events in order to fuel interest, and a flurry of promotion has hyped performers as diverse as opera companies, East Indian dancers and puppet troupes.

The publicity has come all at once, but Duke has been collecting its artistic reputation for many years. During this time, the arts worked with little institutional support and less notice, but administrators have recently emphasized the way artistic expression can enrich education.

 

It’s all about money

The moment started most tangibly with the creation of Duke’s strategic plan, which laid out the areas of study to which Duke would devote resources—meaning money. The plan specifically called for a greater integration of the arts into the academic mission of the University.

In order to fulfill this objective by the plan’s expected completion date at the end of this academic year, administrators upped the profile of arts at Duke. Provost Peter Lange named Richard Riddell, one-time chair of theater studies, special assistant to the provost for arts in order to create institutional support where faculty have long said there is none.

A confidential report from January 2001 said the arts community at Duke was “in sore need of leadership, financial support and new or renovated space.” The report went on to say that many of the departments and programs such as music, drama and dance had accomplished a great deal of scholarship with very little means.

But Duke fell short of its peer schools like Stanford and Princeton Universities. “Frankly,” the report read, “compared to these universities and others in our class, the arts at Duke look shabby.”

Since then, the University hired several prominent professors in music and dance. It upgraded the program in theater studies to a full department, placing a greater emphasis on scholarship and recruiting several professors. Discussion still surfaces about whether to promote dance to a department as well, but so far it remains a program.

The graduate programs, particularly in music, slowly improved their reputations, but the undergraduate programs still lag behind. “Duke has not been well known,” said Scott Lindroth, chair of the music department. “Changing that perception has been very difficult.”

The University is currently trimming budgets and carefully evaluating its growth, but it is investing in the arts, and faculty are expecting it to devote still more resources.

Former President Nan Keohane began many of these efforts, but the change in University leadership suggests an intensification of creative development. President Richard Brodhead and George McLendon, dean of the faculty of Arts and Sciences, have both spoken extensively about the virtues of a flourishing arts community.

McLendon told faculty he planned to “use the arts to spark interest in humanities—as part of being human.”

Theater and music used to be able to get one-time gifts from the University to sponsor major performers and put on special concerts. Much of that money, which had been given annually, has become part of the departmental budgets for the first time this year, allowing the faculty greater control over how the money is spent.

The music department is one of few disciplines authorized to hire two new faculty members this year, and Lindroth said it is on the verge of developing unique programs in jazz and the ethnography of music. All of these steps are designed to tie the performance aspects of art to the academic aspects, administrators said.

“This is not a frill or entertainment,” Davidson said. “This is as serious and important to the academic mission of the University as any other part of the University.”

But Duke faces some geographical challenges as it strives to attract serious artists to teach.

Unlike many other top colleges, Duke is not close to the major metropolitan arts centers, making it more difficult for famous or struggling artists to drop in for guest lectures or to hold part-time appointments. “That presents some unique challenges, but also opportunities,” Riddell said.

McLendon said the University is still trying to balance the number of full-time faculty, part-time professors and visiting artists. To attract the best people, Duke needs lures stronger than the resources it has recently made available.

 

Creating the space

The trumpeted centerpiece of arts progress is the Nasher Museum being constructed in the middle of campus. Brodhead has called it the “spark plug” of Duke’s artistic development, and he totes the museum as a “living” piece of Duke’s academics. “If you ever have a class in that building, it will change your life,” he said.

The decision to replace the Duke University Museum of Art with the new Nasher served as the starting point for the most recent consideration of Duke’s artistic life. Raymond Nasher, the primary donor, offered the money years ago, but only recently did it become possible to build the Rafael Viñoly-designed masterpiece. Several administrators confirmed that Nasher attached strings to his gift so that it could only be built on Campus Drive.

Building the museum near Central Campus, a decision that was made about six years ago, forced the University to think about how to integrate campus arts into each other. Several reports in the ’80s and ’90s encouraged the creation of an arts quad where music, theater, dance and visual arts could all mingle easily. That area of campus would serve as a destination for artistic endeavors.

Duke decided to proceed with facility upgrades rather than create a single area. It finished a $2 million addition to the Bryan Center that gave the theater studies department more rehearsal space and classrooms in 2003. The department was relieved that its new space was close to the theaters it used.

When the John Hope Franklin Center for the Humanities opened in 2001, it also boasted two art galleries.

In addition, the University bought an old tobacco warehouse near East Campus that will become a mecca for the merger of technology, music and visual arts. Galleries, studios and creation spaces will also be housed in the Smith Warehouse. Half of the building is open, but the other half only received funding for the necessary renovations this year.

These developments, however, excluded the creation of a central gathering space for creative endeavors.

The Nasher will serve as a flagship to initially draw people to campus, but it is not a fully interdisciplinary venue. “It’s a way for us to let the broader community know what we’re doing,” said Rorschach, who came to Duke specifically to build the museum’s collection and high profile. “Our mission is as an arts museum, but we want to be a place where all the arts can come together.”

Administrators said that scattering the arts throughout campus, with some areas on East, Central, West and off-East will create an inescapable presence of art that will weave it into the fabric of daily life.

“I think art should be everywhere,” Davidson said. “It’s very, very bad for the arts to be seen as an add on.”

Even though faculty and administrators agree that the Nasher will clearly become a focal point of Duke’s art scene, several faculty members still suggest that Duke may be making the best of an unavoidable situation. “It doesn’t seem to be the result of a clear, careful consideration,” said Peter Burian, chair of classical studies who served on an earlier task force about arts. “It’s simply a way of explaining what we’ve got.”

 

Let them come

In the background of all the institutional support for art programs are the students who create art. The University’s effort to mold an arts community is ultimately dependent on students’ interest.

Recently Duke has given more emphasis to artistic talent when building its undergraduate classes. Hundreds of potential freshmen send tapes of themselves dancing or playing music as part of their college applications. Christoph Guttentag, director of undergraduate admissions, said artistry plays a greater role in the admissions process than it ever has before.

Last year the music department listened to nearly 500 tapes, Lindroth said. Guttentag then asked the department to return a list of the 40 best musicians to receive special consideration.

All 40 students the department recommended received letters of acceptance. “Something like this has never happened before,” Lindroth said.

Although not all the students enrolled, multiple leaders of extra-curricular art groups on campus have said talent and participation levels have risen. Classes in the dance program are turning students away. The diversity of students auditioning for musical theater shows has increased. The orchestra pits in theaters have been full for the first time, and the official orchestra of the University is considering an international tour after a several-year hiatus.

“From my perspective, the interest in performance has been up in recent years,” said Rodney Wynkoop, a professor of the practice and director of the largest Chorale group in memory. “It’s probably true that the more students show their interest in performance, the more likely they’re going to tell other students and faculty. And the more they talk, the more likely it’s going to create a kind of buzz about performance on campus.”

But the University’s plan for arts does not end with the creation of this community, administrators said. When students and faculty become engaged with the arts, administrators hope they will begin to merge the social and intellectual lives of campus. Rather than sending students into the social landscape of the weekend, the University wants to blur the line between learning and lounging.

And, once again, that is where money comes in. As part of a two-year pilot program, the provost is subsidizing most artistic events. Riddell said the goal was to make it cheaper to go to a cultural performance than to a movie.

Administrators ultimately hope that the arts will inspire discussion and creativity in all arenas of life—what Brodhead has repeatedly dubbed the objective of a liberal arts education.

“It makes us all think bigger, better and bolder,” Davidson said. “Even just watching arts is about stretching, and whenever you’re in the realm of imagining, you’re in the realm of the next generation.”