Dear Friends,

The team at Urban Arts Space and Hopkins Hall Gallery has been focused this spring and summer on an exciting suite of new virtual programming through Summer Series and UAS From Home. In addition, we have been preparing for a safe return to campus and our gallery spaces, and we are very excited to introduce you to our brand new pilot, Hybrid Arts Lab.

Hybrid Arts Lab was conceived in the realm of the current pandemic and the result of an afternoon virtual planning session with arts faculty and colleagues. Our conversation evolved around the question: “what it would look like if we experimented with how art is imagined, made, viewed, and understood?” Many viable ideas—and pressing instructional needs—emerged from our discussion; Hybrid Arts Lab embraces much of that through a new strategy of making the arts visible across the university and beyond.

Hybrid Arts Lab envisions a new teaching lab that encourages artistic experimentation and collaboration across three diverse venues:

• Hopkins Hall Gallery, our on-campus gallery, will provide a functional gallery space to enhance the classroom experience and will present experimental arts programming and collaborations. 
• Stillman Hall Tent, a new (temporary) outdoor tent space, provided by the College of Arts and Sciences, will offer opportunities to explore new ways of teaching and artistic expression outside of traditional spaces. 
• UAS from Home, Urban Arts Space’s virtual venue, will support Hybrid Arts Lab’s online exhibitions, conversations and activities in partnership with arts students, faculty and staff.

Hybrid Arts Lab opens this week, supporting a diverse range of arts classes and programs across the College of Arts and Sciences, including “24-Hour Drama,” slated for Saturday, August 29, featuring work by second-year MFA Art students across all three of our venues, and ¡Dimelo Cantando!, on view in Hopkins Hall Gallery September 2 –3.

We are excited to engage you in a vibrant season of arts sharing and our venues will offer rapidly evolving content and programming. Most excitedly, Hybrid Arts Lab offers a peek behind the scenes, increasing visibility of arts teaching and studio practice through live sessions, programming and interviews. It is not too late to participate—Hybrid Arts Lab remains available for class scheduling and programming proposals on a rolling basis throughout the Autumn semester.

Finally, a huge thank you to the arts faculty, staff, students and friends who have made Hybrid Arts Lab possible—we look forward to continued collaboration, multidisciplinary approaches to artmaking and asking big questions through the arts to spark and present thoughtful conversations. Throughout this pilot, we hope to learn more from you about how this or future initiatives can support the ways that art is imagined, made, viewed, and understood—and we count on your active engagement and feedback.

To a vibrant and unprecedented arts season!
 

Merijn van der Heijden (Director), Chris Gose (Deputy Director of Facilities and Programming), Emily Oilar (Operations Manager), and Jeremy Stone (Senior Preparator and Exhibitions Coordinator)

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