CHAMPAIGN, Ill. — A new University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign initiative seeks to amplify and integrate the arts and creative practices throughout the campus. The initiative is being led by Cynthia Oliver, who was named the special advisor to the chancellor for arts integration at the start of this academic year.
Oliver is a dance professor and an award-winning choreographer who served for five years as the associate vice chancellor for research and innovation in the humanities, arts and related fields. She led a 2017 task force on arts integration as part of the development of a new campus strategic plan.
Among the goals of the office are supporting collaborations between artists and researchers in various disciplines and advancing the ability of artists to offer a unique perspective on approaching challenges. Such interdisciplinary collaborations will provide new ways of thinking and understanding problems, and new methods for visualizing solutions, Oliver said.
“I would like to make creative practice a part of the systemic ecology of the campus,” she said. “Arts are not decoration. They are deeply investigative, sophisticated practices. I want that to be recognized, acknowledged and engaged with.”
The campus is a founding member of the Alliance for the Arts in Research Universities. Oliver said that while many universities are trying different approaches to arts integration, few are doing so at the chancellor’s office level. That investment at Illinois “is quite special.”
During the fall 2023 semester, Oliver met with researchers to talk about collaborative projects and the obstacles to doing such work. This semester, she’ll be meeting with administrators to discuss how they can better integrate the arts into their research areas.
One of the main impediments to collaborative projects is funding, Oliver said. She wants to create a small grant program to launch in the fall that would help researchers apply for larger grants and allow them to be released from teaching for a period of time to focus on their projects. She also sees a need for support in the financial management of projects, such as complying with the requirements of grant funding agencies and navigating the logistics of the university’s financial system.
Her vision for the office includes matchmaking between artists and humanists, scientists and social scientists on campus. Oliver said she wants to help faculty members in disciplines outside of the arts understand creative practices, find artists whose work might relate to their own and provide information about artists’ needs and best practices for working with them.
“We’ve got lots of exciting creative practices happening on this campus in a decentralized way. I’d like to have a hub where people are aware of these things that are happening and that provides monetary and structural support,” she said. “I’d really like to create the space where this is not over and above what folks are expected to do, but is integrated into their practice.”
Oliver wants campus arts integration projects to benefit students and community members as well as researchers. She’d like to see collaborations between the campus and the community; an increase in the number of entry-level courses in the College of Fine and Applied Arts; support for interdisciplinary student projects; and classes that are conducive to artists working with students.
“I would love for every student to have a creative encounter while they’re here,” Oliver said.
Amy L. Powell, the curator for modern and contemporary art at Krannert Art Museum, has joined Oliver’s team as curator of campus arts research. She’ll spend half her time working with Oliver, and half her time on exhibition planning at KAM.
Powell said she sees the new position as expanding her curatorial role to the campus level. She’ll commission artists for public art installations on campus and work with visiting artists. She said she is interested in projects with artists whose work addresses the research strengths of the campus, including computer science, astronomy and Black arts research. Some themes Powell would like to pursue for arts projects include arts and technology, and relationships with the land, for both the U. of I. as a land grant institution and the land’s dispossessed Indigenous inhabitants. One of her dream projects is commissioning artists to work with supercomputing research and data.
Powell said that through commissions she would like to encourage unconventional encounters with contemporary art on campus, such as projection on buildings or in lecture room halls, or ephemeral sound installations that consider how we experience campus.
“It’s really about cultivating a culture of creativity and showing how contemporary artists who have research-based practices can offer a lot in a university setting,” Powell said. “Artists use complexity and nuance to engage with the most pressing issues of our day.”
Oliver said she is continuing to build a team and creating a lasting framework for the office.
“I want to try to create an environment in service to creative practice across every area of campus,” she said.