2005 sees new highs in Duke arts

Everyone loves a comeback. And, apparently, Duke is no exception. The recent reinvigorations of old institutions—like this month’s campus-wide student-curated art exhibition, this year’s Broadway Preview series, or the reimagined art museum slated to open in the fall—are evidence of an artistic comeback at Duke.

Just a few years ago “Arts at Duke” was impressive but sparse. There have always been the dependable standbys—student theater groups like the Duke Players or Hoof ’n’ Horn, the student-run Brown Gallery in the Bryan Center, acapella and improv groups, choral and instrumental groups, media exhibitions in Perkins Library. The Duke University Union tried to invigorate the scene by bringing provocative performers and speakers, or theatrical mainstays like Rent. Students tried, they really did, to bring the arts to life at Duke, to provide what the administration could not or would not provide or imagine for the campus. Meanwhile, students continued—and still do—to toil away on films, animation, theatrical reimaginations and visual arts, producing some of the most fascinating work no one’s ever seen.

Then, the sleeping giant awoke.

Nasher was conceived and built, moving an art space once confined to the upper regions of an East Campus building to its own asesthetically pleasing home. Slated to open this fall with Chicago’s David and Alfred Smart Museum of Art’s Kimberly Rorschach at the helm, Nasher gives a home to Duke’s art, and a place for the Duke community to flock.

Peter Lange brought arts to students, subsidizing student tickets for many performances to the sweet and low price of five dollars. He couldn’t have chosen a better time to do so. Duke Performances teemed with invigoration, bringing classical Indian dancers, classical poster-boy Joshua Bell, the Soweto Gospel Choir and the rhythmic imaginations of nicholasleichterdance.

And there was the theater. Oh, the theater. The theater program brought back to life the Broadway Preview series, which had its heyday in the mid 1980s to early ’90s. The program brought big names and innovative shows to Duke, but faded out of the scene until the millennium. Thank goodness for student groups like Duke Players, Brown and Green, Karamu, and Hoof ’n’ Horn that tided us over during the lag and continued to show that Theater at Duke is nothing to be ignored.

But the theater program has the money and connections to make possible what these groups could only dream of. Little Women featuring Tony-Award winning actress Sutton Foster, Ariel Dorfman's Purgatorio, Gore Vidal’s March to Sea, and a smattering of other department produced plays graced our stages with Tony-award winners and our campus with theatrical opportunities.

Of course, Nashers, Little Women, and student-curated exhibitions are not born overnight. They are years and dollars in the making. But the fruits of the labors are showing so vividly—on the stage, in aesthetically invigorating buildings, and in the photo-wrapped East-West buses—that it's hard to not look up with knitted brows and ask, “When did all this happen?” But, if these past couple of years are any predictor, this is just the beginning. Stay tuned.