Princeton University

By the numbers

Creative and performing arts at Princeton

Princeton NJ — The creative and performing arts, the focus of a major new initiative at Princeton (see story in this issue), are relative latecomers to the University’s curriculum:

• Formal instruction in these areas was first organized in 1939 by a faculty committee under the leadership of Dean Christian Gauss. The creative arts program was intended “to allow the talented undergraduate to work in the creative arts under professional supervision while pursuing a regular liberal arts course of study, as well as to offer all interested undergraduates an opportunity to develop their creative faculties in connection with the general program of humanistic education.”

• The original program was supported by a five-year grant from the Carnegie Corporation that made possible the enrichment of opportunities for undergraduates with particular aptitude and interest in music, painting, sculpture and writing.

• Under Gauss’ watchful eye, the program survived World War II in modified form and began to blossom again soon afterward.

• In 1966 the program was given a home in the Nassau Street School, now called 185 Nassau St., which had just been acquired by the University.

• In the early ’70s, the rapid growth of student interest in the creative arts led to further expansion of the original program, and by 1975 there were three separate programs — creative writing, theatre and dance, and visual arts.

• Today the University fully embraces the creative and performing arts as an essential part of its educational mission. As President Tilghman puts it in her recent Report on the Creative and Performing Arts at Princeton: “The arts help all of us to comprehend our world better, and the insights of their practitioners stimulate and challenge thought within the scholarly disciplines.”

Sources: “A Princeton Companion” by Alexander Leitch and President’s Report on the Creative and Performing Arts at Princeton ( www.princeton.edu/pr/reports/arts/)