To recognize a growing investment in the visual arts and creative writing, Rice University’s School of Humanities is changing its name to the School of Humanities and Arts.
“Rice is investing in the creative disciplines at a time when the arts and humanities are central to solving complex global challenges,” said Amy Dittmar, the Howard R. Hughes Provost and executive vice president for academic affairs. “The School of Humanities and Arts will be a crucial part of our academic future, expanding opportunities for students to think critically, express themselves creatively and connect meaningfully with the world.”
Dean Kathleen Canning formally requested the name change, citing the school’s expanded offerings in visual and performing arts, the recruitment of stellar new faculty and the opening of Susan and Fayez Sarofim Hall this month. She noted that undergraduate courses in visual arts and creative writing are consistently wait-listed and that art has been the second-largest major in the school over the past five years.
“The renaming of our school highlights the connective ways in which our students structure their studies to conjoin the arts and engineering, the arts and the natural sciences and the arts and architecture,” Canning said. “Rice has become known for its creative graduates who combine their pursuits of art, creative writing or theater with science, engineering or business.”
The change comes just after the university’s opening of Sarofim Hall, a new state-of-the-art facility dedicated to the visual arts. Designed by Rice alumnus Charles Renfro and the team at Diller Scofidio + Renfro, the building honors the legacy of the de Menils and their former Art Barn and Media Center, once located on the Sarofim Hall site. At the same time, the new building offers new and exciting spaces for interdisciplinary arts collaboration, while also anticipating future art forms in its moveable walls and flexible spaces.
“Sarofim Hall, as a kind of work palace for the student arts at Rice, represents a vital expansion of our school, a site of thriving interdisciplinary interaction and a vibrant neighbor and partner for the public-facing Moody Center for the Arts,” Canning said.
Sarofim Hall joins the Moody and the Shepherd School of Music’s Brockman Hall for Opera and Alice Pratt Brown Hall in what President Reginald DesRoches calls a “vibrant constellation of creative spaces” that he said completes Rice’s on-campus arts district.
“At a moment when universities across the country are cutting resources for the humanities and the arts, Rice is investing in them — building new facilities, hiring exceptional faculty and supporting the next generation of creative thinkers,” Canning said. “This name change honors that momentum and signals our confidence in the enduring relevance of humanistic and artistic inquiry.”
Learn more about the arts and humanities at Rice here.