Luce Grant to Fund Professorship in the Emerging Arts By Marci Janas and Linda Grashoff
			SEPTEMBER 22, 1998--"Just as the camera reinvented the way we think we see, and proposed new standards for what we see as 'reality,' says William Hood, professor of art, "so, too, film and video have made it possible for visual artists to use modes of seeing that are simply unprecedented in the world's art because they are time based without being captives of real time." Hood was part of a group of faculty and staff who saw that the time was right to study the new revolution in the arts and that Oberlin was the place to do it. The group recently wrote a winning proposal to the Henry Luce Foundation that has resulted in Oberlin's creating the Henry R. Luce Professorship in the Emerging Arts. The Luce grant provides up to $1 million in support. President Nancy Dye gave a preliminary announcement of the grant at the September 8 General Faculty meeting. The proposal asserts that the proliferation of digital imagery, computer-generated sound, video footage, and audio clips presents the public with aesthetic experiences as startlingly new to the current generations as the introduction of photography and sound recording were to those living in the 19th century. 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. An entirely new sort of arts curriculum is required. How do we prepare for the new models made possible by technology? How do we study them? Critique them? Interpret them? What aesthetics do we apply to them? What ethics? The Luce Professor will lead the way toward answers. He or she will develop and teach new interdisciplinary courses that provide a theoretical framework for the emerging arts; conduct seminars for faculty from the various art disciplines and the humanities, with the goal of developing a shared understanding of the new interdisciplinary arts courses and curricula for them; and strengthen the Oberlin arts community by identifying talented, emerging artists and providing an intellectual context for their work. Although digital technology and electronic media have been integral to the new art making and are the initial focus of Oberlin's project, the Luce Professorship will have a wider scope. The scholarship and teaching of the Luce Professor will follow and address future directions in art making, whatever they might be. Both Clayton Koppes, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, and Karen Wolff, dean of the Conservatory of Music, members of the grant-writing group, strongly support the new professorship. The grant will fund the professorship for six years and is renewable for up to three years. Dye will convene a national search committee to select the Luce Professor during the coming year. Oberlin is one of only two colleges in the United States this year to receive a grant from the Luce Professorship Program. Established in 1969, the program encourages academic innovation and creativity through integrative and interdisciplinary approaches to teaching and research in American private higher education.