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Department of Visual and Performing Arts at Saint Louis University

SLU Department of Visual and Performing Arts

Saint Louis University's Department of Visual and Performing Arts is made up of four programs: art history, music, studio art, and theatre and dance. Each SLU program emphasizes a different discipline, but all encourage reflection on the world around us through art. Our classes and arts experiences offer an excellent opportunity to study humanity, aesthetics and culture through theory and practice.

Academic Programs

Art History

SLU's art history program examines the significance of art across cultures and throughout history, with a critical eye on the contexts in which it was created.

Music

SLU's music program allows you to master your musical talents while working under the close tutelage of a faculty of professional musicians.

Studio Art

SLU's studio art program teaches you to see and think like a visual artist, utilizing many media to express your ideas.

Theatre and Dance

SLU's theatre and dance program collaborates as a performance company, fostering commitment to the group while strengthening your abilities in performance, design, direction and management. The dance minor investigates the expressive potential of dance as its own art form, in other fields, or in personal practice.


Chair's Message

To Be Whole

 These are difficult times for the arts and higher education, but I think that the Department of Visual and Performing Arts, following the lead of the University, has a contribution to make in sustaining higher ed, the arts, and all of us. SLU talks about educating the whole person, and I think the University does that. I want to go further and say that VPA allows people, students, faculty, and staff, to be whole.

My dear friend Scott, one of the first friends I made as an undergraduate, once said to me, “We are musicians because we can’t do anything else.” I began to protest we are all smart, we can do whatever we choose, we can be businesspeople or engineers or… He stopped me and said, “we are capable of those things, but we can’t do anything but music and be happy.” He was right, but he should have said whole instead of happy.

I am a musician because I have to be one to be whole. My colleagues could all be something other than artists, but to be whole they need to create. Many of our incredibly smart and talented students are going on to pursue other disciplines in graduate school, medicine, speech pathology, physical therapy, the list is long and endlessly varied, but they know they are always going to be that and a musician, painter, actor, someone who creates. That act of creation makes them whole.

Those whole people create and express and by doing that they reveal truth to those around them and that is why I know, somehow, we will get through the current difficulties in higher education and the arts, because the truth that art expresses will always need to be told and there will always be a need for those who tell it.

Students, go into the world and tell the truth as you see it. Speak truth in music, dance, art, theatre, criticism, and all the other things that we do in this department. Let this be the way that you serve others, using your God given gifts in the arts to tell the truth in a world that needs to hear it and by doing so making the people of the world whole.

All good wishes,
Robert L. Hughes, Jr.

Mission Statement

Who Are We?

The Department of Visual and Performing Arts serves as a dynamic center for teaching, creating, and researching in the arts at Saint Louis University.

The Department of Visual and Performing Arts is an integral part of our Jesuit Catholic university, whose mission “encourages and supports innovative scholarship and effective teaching in all fields of the arts.” We, the faculty, actively engage with that mission as creative artists, committed educators, curious learners, and dynamic scholars who are innovators, storytellers, performers, experimenters, researchers, writers, craftspersons, builders, inventors, and collaborators.

Above all, SLU students are the heart of our work together as the center of the arts at SLU. Our department comprises four distinct programs — Art History, Music,  Studio Art, and Theatre & Dance — that allow students to forge their diverse paths in this world with their own approach to the arts. Our students also regularly explore our liberal arts university’s numerous other majors and minors and find connections to the arts across many academic disciplines. 

SLU endorses the arts visibly on our campus through its several arts-dedicated spaces, including a student art gallery, two performance theatres, and three campus art museums. Students also gain from our urban location in the vibrant center of St. Louis with two public art museums, four theatres, several art galleries, and one concert hall all within a few blocks of campus. 

What Do We Value and Why Are We Here?

Importantly, we are a value-driven department. To know our values is to understand what motivates our faculty and defines our students. Our primary values — and how we express them — include:

Creativity
  • Creating art, dance, music, theatre, and scholarship that reflects the human condition
  • Embracing the arts as an outlet for expression and discovery
  • Promoting innovation and its challenges, successes, and failures 
Exploration
  • Guiding exploration of the intellectual and creative potential through the arts
  • Pursuing knowledge in constant investigation leading to lifelong learning
  • Offering tools to develop authentic voices and agency through the arts
Community
  • Cultivating community and collaboration with local, national, and international partners through the study and practice of the arts
  • Supporting diverse identities, learners, and creators in an inclusive, supportive environment
  • Seeking equitable, anti-racist, and anti-ableist policies, procedures, and curricula

What Is Our Vision For The Future?

We envision moving towards the following goals through creation and exploration of the arts in community with our arts colleagues on the SLU-Madrid campus:

  • Expanding opportunities in the arts for SLU students, faculty, and staff
  • Developing a greater public profile for the Department of Visual and Performing Arts at SLU and beyond
  • Striving together toward greater equity, inclusivity, and social justice

Visual and Performing Arts at SLU

20

full-time faculty members

30

adjunct faculty members

4

annual art exhibits

4

annual main stage productions

DEI Statement

The faculty and staff of the Department of Visual and Performing Arts acknowledge that the academy holds histories, barriers and biases that have marginalized and excluded the contributions of individuals of identities such as those of the BIPOC, LGBTQIA+ and neurodivergent communities. Since 2020, we have been undergoing a long-term, deliberate process of reflection, discussion and learning that we hope will bring meaningful systemic changes to our classes and programs.

To facilitate our work, we have established the Equitable Practices Committee with a representative from each department program. The committee consists of faculty members Ilene Berman, Bukky Gbadegesin, Denisse Chavez, and Stephanie Tennill. Our department wants to ensure that our words and actions are intentional. We are committed to developing deeper understandings of our institutional and personal biases and working cooperatively with each other and with our students to grow and develop more inclusive, diverse, and equitable courses, programs, and curricula.

Accessibility and Equity

In 2023, we initiated a departmental discussion of the differences between accessibility and equity and how those differences exist within our classrooms, studios and performance spaces. Each program area has begun a self-assessment to determine what we recognize as areas of strength and areas of need regarding accessibility and equity. The results of the self-assessment will direct the actions we take. These actions are likely to include but are not limited to, accessing expertise outside of the department, convening students to hear their thoughts and concerns, establishing departmental practices that support growth, making it safe to acknowledge mistakes, and challenging our thinking.

For more information, read about Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion initiatives in the College of Arts and Sciences and SLU's Division of Diversity and Innovative Community Engagement.