As they prepare to walk the Lawn, graduating fourth-year leaders are leaving their mark on student arts organizations. From increased accessibility for student dancers and comedians, to a more inclusive community established in the theater and music scenes, the University’s robust arts community has undergone tremendous change under its class of 2025 leaders.
With the arrival of the 2025 graduation weekend, student musicians went above and beyond to deliver memorable last performances. Whether it was their own last hurrah or in commemoration of their band members graduation, University bands set the Corner abuzz with music and bittersweet nostalgia as fellow fourth-years flooded to the bars to toast their achievements.
The Virginia Theatre Festival will launch its 51st season with Into the Woods, the Stephen Sondheim/James Lapine Tony Award-winning musical that follows some of our favorite fairy tale characters on a journey toward, and beyond, happily ever after. Into the Woods, directed and choreographed by UVA alum Matthew Steffens, who directed VTF’s highly acclaimed 2023 production Cabaret, will run from June 27-July 6. Tickets start at only $15, with $5 tickets available for children 12 and under.
You’re listening to WTJU Charlottesville. The Early Music Access Project collaborates with Pulitzer Prize winning poet Rita Dove for Bellringer, a program that celebrates the intersection of poetry and music. For Arts This week, we spoke to EMAP’s artistic director, David McCormick.
When the Rotunda burned down in October of 1895 — faulty wiring was to blame — University of Virginia officials immediately pushed to rebuild, and in 1896, after a false start with McDonald Brothers of Louisville, Kentucky, the Board of Visitors hired prominent New York architects McKim, Mead & White. Stanford White, the artistic force of the firm, was the lead architect on the Rotunda redesign. The University also hired the firm to design three new buildings to enclose the South Lawn. These buildings, also designed by White, came to be Rouss, Cocke, and Cabell Halls, and White also went on to design Garrett Hall as well as Carr’s Hill, the UVA president’s home.
The Library’s exhibitions program allows us to serve the UVA community and beyond as an evolving space for discovery and celebration of our shared cultural heritage, by showcasing to the public the rare and unique materials available to the University’s faculty, students, and visiting researchers in a controlled environment, and celebrating them in creative and edifying ways. Exhibitions also allow us to take advantage of partnerships with other institutions and guest curators to bring fresh insight and new treasures to our galleries.
David J. Getsy, the Eleanor Shea Professor of Art History, has been awarded a prestigious Guggenheim Fellowship, recognizing his groundbreaking research at the intersection of art history, queer studies, trans studies and performance studies. Getsy’s work has significantly contributed to understanding how non-normative genders and sexualities have shaped art and cultural history.
To celebrate the 100th anniversary of the American artist Joan Mitchell’s birth, museums all over — such as the Smithsonian American Art Museum, the Museum of Modern Art and the Seattle Art Museum — are displaying collections of her work. However, along with celebrating the artistry of Joan Mitchell, the Fralin Museum of Art exhibit also centers the process of restoring the artwork itself.
Creatures from the sky and the sea met Friday evening on the University of Virginia’s Grounds. Delia, a flying creature, and her aquatic companion Peri marched from Culbreth Theatre to the Rotunda and back as part of the annual Stan Winston and Steven Warner Festival of the Moving Creature.
When University of Virginia fourth-year student Molly Rathbun propped open the doors to Nau Hall on a rainy February morning, she wasn’t sure who would brave the weather for the event she created. By day’s end, Rathbun’s Deaf Literature Festival had welcomed more than 80 attendees, featured six authors in the Deaf community and hosted an open mic session.
Add three more University of Virginia faculty members to the list of American Academy of Arts & Sciences fellows. The prestigious honorary society and research center announced April 23 that biology professor Raymond Keller, music professor Nicole Mitchell Gantt and astronomy professor Roger Chevalier join this year’s 250-member class. The academy dates to the American Revolution, and fellowship is considered one of the highest academic honors for faculty.
The University’s arts scene is a thriving one with student-run theater productions and a cappella concerts, coupled with film screenings, gallery shows, comedy nights and literary journals. This is, in no small part, a result of the passionate student artists on and around Grounds who bring it to life — not just as performers or creators, but as writers, editors and commentators.
