Experience the
Art of Change
Welcome to the
Arts Division
The UCSC Arts Division offers students a unique combination of visionary creativity, interdisciplinary collaboration, and a deep commitment to social and environmental justice.
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Events
Victor ‘Marka27’ Quiñonez: Ni de Aquí, Ni de Allá
Marketing Yourself In The Arts Industry
UCSC News
Arts, Music
California Arts Council fellowship supports faculty member’s musical innovation, from opera to hip-hop
Assistant Professor akua naru will receive unrestricted funding for her work, which centers Black music, culture, and experience.
Arts, Film & Digital Media, Humanities
THI Moving Image Lab Public Fellow helps bring horror exhibition to life at the Academy Museum
A scholar of queer history and culture with a passion for horror, Bradford Nordeen is The Humanities Institute Moving Image Lab’s 2026 curatorial and exhibitions fellow at the Academy Museum, where he worked on the new exhibition The Horror Show, featuring nearly 400 horror-movie artifacts. The exhibition, which runs until July 21, drew nearly 8,000 visitors during its opening weekend in late September.
Arts, History of Consciousness, Humanities
Quarry Amphitheater to Present Sir Isaac Julien’s Landmark Film Young Soul Rebels
A newly restored director’s cut of Sir Isaac Julien’s acclaimed 1991 film Young Soul Rebels is coming to the Quarry Amphitheater on Wednesday, October 21.
Following the screening, Julien, Distinguished Professor of the Arts and Humanities, will join The Humanities Institute (THI) and the Moving Image Lab for a discussion of the film’s origins, its restoration, and how its ideas have evolved across his career.
Featured In The News
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‘Playing with Fire: An Ecosexual Emergency’ – Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle’s documentary on devastation and recovery When the 2020 CZU Lightning Complex fires swept through the Santa Cruz Mountains, forcing longtime lovers and artistic collaborators Beth Stephens and Annie Sprinkle to evacuate their Boulder…
Division News
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The Arts Division Welcomes New Faculty Member Hiba Ali
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The Festival of Monsters returns to Santa Cruz
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UCSC students spend a week in Yosemite learning about conservation, art, and climate change
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With sculptures of melting popsicles and artworks of people performing rescue carries, new exhibitions at the IAS are a reminder of the potential of art and images to define—and redefine—notions of belonging
Featured Faculty
Featured Alumni
Featured Students
Featured Staff
Arts Division Event Highlights
Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion
We will not experience the full power of the arts unless access to the means of representation is available to all. And we will not realize the full power of the arts if our iconographies and methodologies are dictated by the very few. So, I am driven to expand access so that authorship, critique and the shaping of what we know can be driven by all, and what we take for granted or natural can shift, and to keep our definition of the arts, fervently open.
