Oberlin Awarded Henry Luce Foundation Grant
A prestigious grant from The Henry Luce Foundation will provide up to $1 million in support to Oberlin, one of just two colleges in the United States awarded the grant this year.
The Luce Professorship Program will fund the Henry R. Luce Professorship in the Emerging Arts for six years, renewable for up to an additional three years. The program was established in 1969 to encourage academic innovation and creativity through integrative and interdisciplinary approaches to teaching and research in American private higher education.
In its proposal to the Luce Foundation, Oberlin explained that the proliferation of digital imagery, computer-generated sound, video footage, and audio clips presents the public with aesthetic experiences as startlingly new as the introduction of photography and sound recording were in their time.
Unprecedented modes of seeing require new interdisciplinary models of arts education and intellectual frameworks for examining the criticism, theory, ethics, and aesthetics of new modes of making art. They require an entirely new sort of arts curriculum. These issues will comprise the initial focus of Oberlin's project, to be overseen by the Henry R. Luce Professor in the Emerging Arts, yet to be named.
"Oberlin is ideally suited for the position because of its rich tradition of arts," noted Dean Clayton Koppes. "Its nationally-recognized programs in art history and studio art, creative writing, theater and dance, and its student artistic initiatives and collaborations in all of the musical, fine, and performing arts are unmatched by any other American college and equaled by few universities."
A national search committee, to be convened by President Dye, will select the Luce Professor during the coming year.