Amid fiscal gloom, Harvard spotlights arts

Seeks MFA offering, course expansion

Last fall, while christening a campus theater, president Drew Faust boldly declared the beginning of a new era for the arts at Harvard University.

Yesterday, a university panel assembled by Faust tried to start fulfilling that promise by unveiling wide-ranging plans to elevate the arts on campus, including the addition of a master of fine arts program, more undergraduate art courses, a new dramatic arts major, and the construction and expansion of arts facilities. The goal: ending what Faust had called the "curricular banishment" of the arts into the extracurricular realm.

The initiatives, which elicited praise from Harvard's artistic community, are a big step for a liberal arts university famous for historically steering clear of preprofessional majors. But they also raised questions about how Harvard would pay for them amid a tight economic climate. Just one day earlier, the university announced further cuts in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, its largest academ ic body.

Enacting the broad vision of the arts panel could take decades and cost millions. But Faust said in an interview yesterday that she would begin funding some initiatives "in the very near term" with $5 million set aside for hands-on arts instruction from David Rockefeller's $100 million donation in April.

"People might like the idea of thinking about something other than the financial crisis," Faust said. "Some of these things will take an unspecified amount of time, and some of these will never happen at all, or maybe 10 years from now they'll be brought back again as ideas."

Changes would probably begin at the undergraduate level by introducing new arts classes and majors and by infusing the arts into existing courses, said Stephen Greenblatt, an English professor who headed the arts panel.

Students should not only study art, as currently required, but practice it, the report said. Filmmaking, creative writing, and dramatic performance should be an accepted, pedagogically well-supported component of the curriculum.

Harvard, though, has no plans to create freestanding conservatory programs; all arts education will be folded into a liberal arts framework.

"We're trying to figure out the appropriate balance between theory and practice," Greenblatt said.

The university should encourage professors from different disciplines to teach courses in teams, he said. A class on "commemoration," for example, could be taught by a historian, a philosopher, and a sculptor.

Harvard also hopes to introduce a dramatic arts major and expand the number of classes focused on acting, directing, dance, and choreography - subjects that are currently oversubscribed. Fewer than half of the students who apply to the courses get in.

A dramatics arts major would require students to take courses in theater history, literature, criticism, and theory as well as practical courses in playwriting and design. It would also require hiring more faculty, even though officials within the Faculty of Arts and Sciences on Tuesday said they would curtail most faculty searches next school year to save money. Many of the drama courses are now taught by English professors or resident actors and directors of the American Repertory Theatre, housed at Harvard.

Bill Grace, a Harvard sophomore and aspiring director, said he would major in the dramatic arts if it were already offered. Instead, he is designing his own major combining dramatic arts and English. "The arts merit the same academic consideration as any other field," said Grace.

The 19-member arts panel spent the past year visiting other elite universities to learn how they approach the arts. Harvard is the only school among its peers that does not offer an MFA.

Because Harvard would be following established MFA programs elsewhere, the arts panel recommended that the university distinguish its program by offering artists access to its business, medical, law, and divinity schools for interdisciplinary work.

Each building project, such as renovation of undergraduate dorms, should also give serious consideration to providing space for arts practice, production, and display, the report said.

Harvard's development in Allston could allow the university to build that space, but plans for across the river remain unclear; all construction is under review after Harvard's endowment lost 22 percent of its value this fall.

"In times of uncertainty, the arts remind us of our humanity and provide the reassuring proof that we, along with the Grecian urn, have endured and will continue to do so," Faust said in a written statement. "Now is the time to embrace, not retreat from, the arts."

Tracy Jan can be reached at tjan@globe.com.