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Department of Visual and Performing Arts at Saint Louis University

SLU Department of Visual and Performing Arts

Saint Louis University's Department of Visual and Performing Arts is made up of four programs: art history, music, studio art, and theatre and dance. Each SLU program emphasizes a different discipline, but all encourage reflection on the world around us through art. Our classes and arts experiences offer an excellent opportunity to study humanity, aesthetics and culture through theory and practice.

Visual and Performing Arts Programs

Art History

SLU's art history program examines the significance of art across cultures and throughout history, with a critical eye on the contexts in which it was created.

Music

SLU's music program allows you to master your musical talents while working under the close tutelage of a faculty of professional musicians.

Studio Art

SLU's studio art program teaches you to see and think like a visual artist, utilizing many media to express your ideas.

Theatre and Dance

SLU's theatre and dance program collaborates as a performance company, fostering commitment to the group while strengthening your abilities in performance, design, direction and management. The dance minor investigates the expressive potential of dance as its own art form, in other fields, or in personal practice.


Chair's Message

Greetings!

I am writing as the chair of the Department of Visual and Performing Arts (VPA) at Saint Louis University (SLU) to say welcome to our web pages about our four programs of Art History, Music, Studio Art, and Theatre and Dance. After a few challenging years due to the pandemic, we are thriving in our creative and research endeavors. Now, more pointedly than ever, we provide our campus with essential artistic resources and outlets to explore how the arts can be a tool for expression and discovery in our lives and communities. 

One thing that has solidified for us in VPA is our renewed appreciation for the value of face-to-face interactions as the arts are meant to be shared and help us communicate with those around us. VPA has always had close faculty-to-student connections in our classes, studios, ensembles and productions. As many majors and minors have expressed to me, those bonds are very special in the formulation of their skills and their academic grounding for their futures.

The VPA faculty help guide our majors and minors to experiment as they prepare for their next steps, whether that be the first job in their careers or advanced study in graduate school. For instance, we have career preparation courses to set up a resume, write a cover letter, or draft an artist’s statement. I am regularly amazed at the wonderful experiences that our undergraduates find in the vibrant arts community of St. Louis and beyond. From researching labels in SLU’s Museum of Art to running lights at the St. Louis Shakespeare Festival to preparing promotional materials for the Opera Theatre of St. Louis, we encourage such internships and offer credit for that work. 

SLU boasts myriad ways to bring creativity to life. Students can throw clay on a wheel, play music in an ensemble, present in a symposium, act in a play, apply paint to canvas, choreograph a dance, brainstorm about logos, capture a moment on camera, construct a costume, explore artworks in a museum, or make computer art. Our liberal arts university provides an uncommon option for arts majors and minors — as well as those looking for new artistic ventures through the Core Curriculum or general electives — to stretch their creativity through VPA.

I invite you to read about our department’s revised mission to serve as a dynamic center for teaching, creating, and researching in the arts at Saint Louis University with emphases on creativity, exploration and community. We aim to have our department be a place where each individual can find a sense of belonging and acceptance for their own identity, striving together toward greater equity, inclusivity, and social justice in concert with the mission of our university. We look forward to seeing you on campus!

All good wishes, 

Cathleen A. Fleck, Ph.D.

Chair, Visual and Performing Arts

 

Mission Statement

Who Are We?

The Department of Visual and Performing Arts serves as a dynamic center for teaching, creating, and researching in the arts at Saint Louis University.

The Department of Visual and Performing Arts is an integral part of our Jesuit Catholic university, whose mission “encourages and supports innovative scholarship and effective teaching in all fields of the arts.” We, the faculty, actively engage with that mission as creative artists, committed educators, curious learners, and dynamic scholars who are innovators, storytellers, performers, experimenters, researchers, writers, craftspersons, builders, inventors, and collaborators.

Above all, SLU students are the heart of our work together as the center of the arts at SLU. Our department comprises four distinct programs — Art History, Music,  Studio Art, and Theatre & Dance — that allow students to forge their diverse paths in this world with their own approach to the arts. Our students also regularly explore our liberal arts university’s numerous other majors and minors and find connections to the arts across many academic disciplines. 

SLU endorses the arts visibly on our campus through its several arts-dedicated spaces, including a student art gallery, two performance theatres, and three campus art museums. Students also gain from our urban location in the vibrant center of St. Louis with two public art museums, four theatres, several art galleries, and one concert hall all within a few blocks of campus. 

What Do We Value and Why Are We Here?

Importantly, we are a value-driven department. To know our values is to understand what motivates our faculty and defines our students. Our primary values — and how we express them — include:

Creativity
  • Creating art, dance, music, theatre, and scholarship that reflects the human condition
  • Embracing the arts as an outlet for expression and discovery
  • Promoting innovation and its challenges, successes, and failures 
Exploration
  • Guiding exploration of the intellectual and creative potential through the arts
  • Pursuing knowledge in constant investigation leading to lifelong learning
  • Offering tools to develop authentic voices and agency through the arts
Community
  • Cultivating community and collaboration with local, national, and international partners through the study and practice of the arts
  • Supporting diverse identities, learners, and creators in an inclusive, supportive environment
  • Seeking equitable, anti-racist, and anti-ableist policies, procedures, and curricula

What Is Our Vision For The Future?

We envision moving towards the following goals through creation and exploration of the arts in community with our arts colleagues on the SLU-Madrid campus:

  • Expanding opportunities in the arts for SLU students, faculty, and staff
  • Developing a greater public profile for the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at SLU and beyond
  • Striving together toward greater equity, inclusivity, and social justice

Visual and Performing Arts at SLU

20

full-time faculty members

30

adjunct faculty members

4

annual art exhibits

4

annual main stage productions

DEI Statement

The faculty and staff of the Department of Visual and Performing Arts acknowledge that the academy holds histories, barriers and biases that have marginalized and excluded the contributions of individuals of identities such as those of the BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ and neurodivergent communities. Since 2020, we have been undergoing a long-term, deliberate process of reflection, discussion and learning that we hope will bring meaningful systemic changes to our classes and programs.

To facilitate our work, we have established the Equitable Practices Committee with a representative from each department program. The committee consists of Ilene Berman, Bukky Gbadegesin, Robert Hughes and Holly Seitz Marchant. Our department wants to ensure that our words and actions are intentional. We are committed to developing deeper understandings of our institutional and personal biases and working cooperatively with each other and with our students to grow and develop more inclusive, diverse, and equitable courses, programs, and curricula.

Department Name Change 

Welcome to the Visual and Performing Arts Department of Saint Louis University (formerly the Department of Fine and Performing Arts) — new name, same creative thinkers and makers. This name change is the result of an intentional process we, the faculty, staff, and students of the department, engaged in to better describe who we are and what we do. It acknowledges that the word "fine", when applied to the arts, carries with it assumptions and exclusions that were too limiting for ourselves or our work as a department. We find inspiration in materials, movement, music, performance, research and writing, which is better expressed as "visual and performing" arts. We imagine our artmaking, research and work with students will continue to expand and want our name to reflect that potential for growth and inclusion. We welcome you to join us as we explore the impact of the arts on the Saint Louis University campus and beyond and continue to broaden the ways we communicate, collaborate and create.

Accessibility and Equity

In 2023, we initiated a departmental discussion of the differences between accessibility and equity and how those differences exist within our classrooms, studios and performance spaces. Each program area has begun a self-assessment to determine what we recognize as areas of strength and areas of need regarding accessibility and equity. The results of the self-assessment will direct the actions we take. These actions are likely to include but are not limited to, accessing expertise outside of the department, convening students to hear their thoughts and concerns, establishing departmental practices that support growth, making it safe to acknowledge mistakes, and challenging our thinking.

For more information, read about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives in the College of Arts and Sciences and SLU's Division of Diversity and Innovative Community Engagement.