Task force report on arts at Wellesley evaluates facilities, coordination among departments, curricu

In 2008 Wellesley released a task force report evaluating the arts and their role at the College. Formed in the fall of 2006, the task force on the arts met monthly for a year to work towards the release of the report. Now, in 2010, the results of the task force are continually taken into consideration to improve and expand the arts at Wellesley.

The task force consisted of faculty, alumnae and individuals from outside the Wellesley community who were dealing with similar issues in the arts. The report highlights the strengths of the arts curriculum at Wellesley and details a comprehensive range of issues. The task force evaluated various aspects of the arts at Wellesley, including facilities for the arts, technology and the arts, coordination among art departments and a larger vision for the arts at a liberal arts college. The report also included evaluation of  specific departments and programs. In order to gain such an expansive overview of the arts at Wellesley, the task force invited groups of arts faculty to discuss areas of improvement within their department.

The task force report on the arts found a few overall areas for improvement at Wellesley. One major recommendation was to initiate coordination among the various arts departments, perhaps with a coordinator of arts and cultural programs. The task force also pointed to the need for better art facilities in general, noting particularly the urgency for renovations in Jewett/Pendleton West area, where students have been injured in the past. After observing the lack of a dancing facilities and higher level dance classes, the task force suggested the formation of a separate dance department to fulfill the needs of students committed to dance. Another proposal was the consideration, and perhaps more conscious implementation, of technology in the arts curriculum, especially in the context of cinema and media studies and media arts and sciences. The task force also envisioned the creation of an Arts Esplanade, a collection of buildings centered on the arts, as a long-term project.

Since the report came out two years ago, the major implementation of the task force report was the appointment of an arts coordinator. Jennifer Hughes '06, who was made Director of Publicity and Coordination for the Arts last year, has since created the Wellesley Arts Calendar and is working on creating an online presence for arts events. "It's been a platform for discussion across arts disciplines," Hughes said of the calendar, noting the productive collaborative efforts of the Arts Council, which meets regularly to discuss events and assemble the arts calendar. The Arts Council consists of faculty from the music, theater, arts and cinema and media studies departments, Newhouse Center for Humanities and the Davis Museum. Hughes commented on the calendar's efficiency by remarking that "the academic side of the school was interested in building this collaboration and in building a platform for interdisciplinary programming and more conversation and making a bigger splash with what we do, and the college was looking at ways to be more efficient in tough times." Students can look forward to a new calendar for spring 2011, highlighting programs like the upcoming world premiere of a musical adaptation of "Sense and Sensibility," a creation by the music and theater departments that speaks to the increased collaboration among departments at Wellesley.

As for other improvements and developments on the arts at Wellesley, the college is in the process of collecting faculty responses to the reports. "Just because a task force reviews something and says, ‘We think this should happen,' that doesn't mean that everybody who's in that area is going to feel that should be the priority,"  Lynch said. Since the release of the report, the College has appointed a new director of the Davis Museum and director of the Newhouse Humanities Center, bringing fresh energy to both programs.

Facility renovations are also part of a long-term plan for the arts and the college remains open to the idea of a separate dance department. However, Provost and Dean of the College Andrew Shennan added, "We don't want to give the impression that this is a document set in stone. It's something that has stimulated and will continue to stimulate conversation within the faculty and we hope among the students also." The task force report has begun an important examination of the arts at Wellesley, which, as Shennan asserted, "should be seen as central to a liberal arts education." Ideally, the report will continue to encourage an ongoing dialogue between the College, faculty and students about enhanced arts programming and increased collaboration between departments and disciplines.

The task force on the arts is just one part of the College's process of self-evaluation. Two other task forces, one on the sciences and one on foreign languages, have already released reports. "We're constantly reviewing different programs and departments," said Dean of Faculty Affairs Kathryn Lynch, noting that a visiting committee is currently in the process of reviewing the studio art department at Wellesley. The College also plans to evaluate the non-foreign language humanities and the social sciences departments in the future. "We want to look broadly at a lot of different parts of the college and kind of get a more integrated plan of how to move forward in different areas,"  Lynch said, adding that future evaluations of departments may not necessarily use the task force model.

The College views these task force reports as documents that illuminate overall problems within Wellesley rather than inflexible, nonnegotiable solutions. Wellesley's Catherine Mills Davis Professor of Music Martin Brody, the chair of the task force for the arts, noted, "The idea wasn't to come up with something that was absolutely definitive, but rather to get people who have different perspectives to contribute and to come up with something that would touch on a lot of different issues."