UCI Claire Trevor School of the Arts to Launch Distinguished Artist Speaker Series

The series launches with renowned professionals in both entertainment and art

Irvine, Calif., Sept. 29, 2021 – UCI Claire Trevor School of the Arts (CTSA), a national arts research and education leader, will launch an inaugural Distinguished Artist Speaker Series in October 2021 as part of the UCI Brilliant Future Campaign. The series brings cutting-edge artists and arts professionals in art, dance, drama, and music to campus to engage with students, faculty, and the community and encourages thought-provoking and culturally diverse artistic ideas.

“Adding to CTSA’s productions, exhibitions, and scholarly and creative research, our Distinguished Artist Speaker Series brings fascinating practicing artists and thinkers to the campus community,” said Stephen Barker, dean of the Claire Trevor School of the Arts. “The Series is an exciting new way to spotlight individuals at the heart of the creative research enterprise. We hope the public will join us for this great opportunity to meet and hear pivotal members of the arts community.”

The series will launch on Tuesday, October 12, 2021, at 7 p.m. in Winifred Smith Hall with the Department of Drama’s guest Janet Graham Borba, the Executive Vice President of Production for HBO Films. Over the last two decades, Graham Borba has overseen numerous award-winning series such as Angels in America, John Adams, The Pacific and Game of Thrones. She currently supervises production on all of HBO’s original series.

The series continues on November 18 at 7 p.m. with the Department of Art’s guest, Charles Gaines, the renowned contemporary visual artist. Gaines is a pivotal figure in the field of conceptual art and an influential educator in Southern California. Gaines’ body of work engages formulas and systems that interrogate relationships between the objective and the subjective realms. Using a generative approach to create series of works in a variety of mediums, he has built a bridge between the early conceptual artists of the 1960s and 1970s and subsequent generations of artists pushing the limits of conceptualism today.

Guests for the Departments of Dance and Music will be hosted in the winter and spring academic quarters and announced at a later date. Admission is free and open to the public with a reservation. To learn more about the guest speakers and reserve your space, please visit the CTSA website at www.arts.uci.edu/events, or use our direct links to the events for Janet Graham Borba and Charles Gaines.

About UCI Claire Trevor School of the Arts: As UCI’s creative laboratory, the Claire Trevor School of the Arts explores and presents the arts as the essence of human experience and expression, through art forms ranging from the most traditional to the radically new. The international faculty works across a wide variety of disciplines, partnering with others across the campus.  National-ranked programs in art, dance, drama, and music begin with training but end in original invention. Students come to UCI to learn to be citizen-artists, to sharpen their skills and talents, and to become the molders and leaders of world culture. For more information, visit www.arts.uci.edu.

About the University of California, Irvine: Founded in 1965, UCI is the youngest member of the prestigious Association of American Universities. The campus has produced three Nobel laureates and is known for its academic achievement, premier research, innovation and anteater mascot. Led by Chancellor Howard Gillman, UCI has more than 36,000 students and offers 222 degree programs. It’s located in one of the world’s safest and most economically vibrant communities and is Orange County’s second-largest employer, contributing $5 billion annually to the local economy. For more on UCI, visit www.uci.edu.

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