Vision & History

Who We Are

The Arts Research Center serves as an Incubator for new research and artistic experiment, as a Nexus for faculty, students, and art professionals, and as an Advocate that champions the arts on and off campus.

The Arts Research Center does not seek to replicate what is already being done well in the academic arts departments or by the arts presenting organizations on campus. Rather, by defining itself as a think tank for the arts, it acts as a hub and a meeting place, a space for reflection where artists, scholars, curators, and civic arts leaders from a variety of disciplines can gather and learn from one another. ARC advances but also challenges the “cross-disciplinary” ethos in contemporary art practice by bringing innovators in the fields of visual art, public art, dance, theatre, music, architecture, film, creative writing, photography, and social practice into dialogue and debate. Participants share different histories, test perceptions of skill and innovation, and analyze the economic circuits and support systems that constrain and enable cross-disciplinary art practice.

Vision and Note from ARC Director Beth Piatote

We look forward to sharing our vision for the 2024/2025 year in the coming months. Please check back.

History

The Arts Research Center was founded 24 years ago as an Organized Research Unit (ORU) within the Consortium for the Arts, a coalition conceived by then Provost Carol Christ to “advance all of the arts Berkeley” (1998-2008), by co-founders Charles Altierri, Anthony Cascardi, TJ Clark, Harrison Faker, and Shannon Jackson. Together, ARC and the Consortium organized a broad range of symposia, artist residencies, and teaching opportunities. When funding was eliminated for the Consortium in 2008, ARC continued as the only ORU devoted to the arts at UC Berkeley, specializing most intently on supporting the research and creative activity of ARC-affiliated faculty. At the same time, ARC has endeavored to sustain the wider campus arts vision of the Consortium through fellowships, student programs, and other forms of public engagement, continuing on as a hub for cross-disciplinary research.

We are grateful for the support and community building of our over 45 partners and co-sponsors. Over the past 24 years, ARC has supported arts research at Berkeley through hundreds of lectures, artist talks, readings, performances and symposia by world renowned practitioners and scholars. Our Visiting Artists-in-Residence program has brought 25 artists to campus for in-depth, extended visits to pursue their own creative work and collaborate with students and faculty. Since 2009, ARC has supported fellowships for over 150 faculty, graduate and undergraduate students from 40 departments on campus, including our most recent initiative with Poetry and the Senses. As a ‘think tank,’ ARC develops projects that capitalize upon the resources and goals of our campus constituencies, even as we also address programming and publication toward broad networks of local and international art leaders. We seek to bring the world to Berkeley, and Berkeley to the world. This reciprocal relationship creates links to and between a dynamic international art scene. Please visit our past programming.

The Arts Research Center at UC Berkeley continues to refine its mission and identity as “a think tank for the arts” that advances the arts at our public university and in public life. It has developed new ways to engage faculty and increased the number of public and educational events it organizes each year and strengthened existing partnerships on and off campus. ARC has built collaborations within the University and with local and international organizations, augmenting its limited resources through successful grant proposals and actively increasing its private support. ARC is well- managed, well-respected, and poised to ascend to a new level of visibility and impact.

ARC has developed significant time and resources to two broad-based research platforms: Inter-Arts Inquiry, and Art and Social Change. We conceive multi-disciplinary investigations, experiments, and conversations, creating opportunities for artists, arts administrators, and scholars from a range of fields to identify connections and also to come to terms with different (and sometimes competing) vocabularies and value systems in a variety of art worlds. We think both about art practices that address issues of inequity and social justice while simultaneously investigating the social and economic ecologies necessary to sustain a robust cultural sector. We like to view these programs as looking both inward and outward. As a ‘think tank,’ we develop projects that capitalize upon the resources and goals of our campus con- stituencies, even as we also address programming and publication toward broad networks of local and international art leaders. We seek to bring the world to Berkeley, and Berkeley to the world. This reciprocal relationship creates links to a dynamic international art scene. Our goal for the future is to build upon these accomplishments and to establish ARC as a prime site for bracing conversation and cutting-edge collaboration in the domains of inter-arts inquiry and of art and social change.

A think tank can host a broad range of activities, from public programs to private retreats, from fellowships to residencies. Over the last 24 years, the Arts Research Center has generated significant energy and engagement. ARC has experimented with new forms and expanded on its traditional areas of programmatic activity, including symposia, workshops, artists talks, intimate conversations among colleagues from around the Bay Area and compelling dialogue across continents.

Interested in how we pronounce our acronym? It is A.R.C. rather than "arc" – although we are happy to respond either way.

Recent Faculty Directors

2022 - present: Beth Piatote

2017 - 2022: Julia Bryan-Wilson

Fall 2021: Chiyuma Elliott (interim)

2018/19 academic year: Natalia Brizuela (interim)

2010 - 2016: Shannon Jackson (co-founder)

“The Arts Research Center is a vital hub of activity at UC Berkeley and within the greater Bay Area arts terrain. With its innovative range of programming and its high-profile slate of speakers, symposia, and workshops that address some of the most urgent questions facing the arts today –– including urban planning, gentrificaiton, globalization, artistic labor, and inter-media collaborations, –– it has become an internationally recognized leader in propelling discussions about arts research today. ARC does something unique––and absolutely essential–– for Berkeley and beyond, as it fosters conversations between and among scholars, artists, and activists about the crucial role of the arts on campuses, in cities, and in our lives."

JULIA BRYAN-WILSON, Former ARC Director, Professor of Art History

About the Arts Research Center, UC Berkeley

2015 Video Introduction from Former ARC Director, Shannon Jackson