The Stanford Arts Institute (SAI) promotes the arts as an integral element of education and research at the University. It offers interdisciplinary curricula and programs that center the arts as a mode of inquiry, foster a culture of creativity, forge connections across departments, and amplify Stanford’s spirit of innovation.
SAI administers two undergraduate degree programs: the Inter-Arts Minor, which allows students to design an interdisciplinary study plan that unites their critical and creative interests, and Honors in the Arts, which provides a framework for students to complete a creative thesis project in interdisciplinary arts during their senior year. Both programs are open to students in any major. Their shared aim is to allow students across the University to deepen their understanding of the arts, to familiarize themselves with creative theory and techniques, and to make meaningful connections between their home disciplines and art practice.
SAI’s Arts + Justice initiative supports a wide-range of activities at the intersection of creative practice and social justice. This includes an extracurricular grant program for undergraduate and graduate students investigating urgent matters around arts and any number of justice issues including race equity, environmentalism, mass incarceration, mental health, LGBTQ+ community, and affordable healthcare. Alongside the student grants, SAI also joins partners across campus to bring together innovative artists and scholars for Arts + Justice research workshops and lecture series.
The Stanford Arts Institute also administers a series of Arts Immersion programs, in which undergraduate students participate in curated trips to creative hubs like New York City, Los Angeles, the San Francisco Bay Area, Detroit and Venice. In addition to visiting a host of art and performance venues, the students meet institutional leaders, policy makers, and arts practitioners to gain an insider’s view on these cultural capitals.
Under the leadership of Denning Family Director Hideo Mabuchi (Professor of Applied Physics), the Arts Institute works with a variety of campus partners to support innovative projects and bring world-renowned artists to campus for research, performance and student engagement. In 2023, Mabuchi collaborated with former Denning Family Director and Professor of Art and Art History Jean Ma to convene Research and the Artistic (Im)Pulse: a two-day symposium exploring how artists’ ways of thinking and doing can inspire new modes of work across diverse disciplines, with direct engagement of public interest and impact on pressing societal needs. The symposium featured world renowned artists, including Tanya Aguiñiga, Onyeka Igwe, Ken Liu, Rafael Lozano-Hemmer, Tavares Strachan, and Anicka Yi.
SAI also collaborates with visiting artists to create one-of-a-kind courses for students across the University, such as Anicka Yi and Miguel Novelo Cruz's 2023 course "Metaspore: The Networked Sensorium."
Other recent co-sponsorships include the “We Want A Free Planet” Black Panther Party Photo Exhibition, hosted by Stanford’s Department of African and African American Studies, campus visits from poet Vievee Francis and visual artist Enrico Riley in connection with The Ritual of Breath is the Right to Resist, and events with visiting filmmakers such as Kevin Jerome Everson and Apichatpong Weerasethakul.
The Stanford Arts Institute is a unit within the Vice President for the Arts.
Institute Staff
Hideo Mabuchi
Denning Family Director,
Stanford Arts Institute
Professor of Applied Physics
hmabuchi@stanford.edu
SAI Advisory Group
The SAI Advisory Group assists the SAI Faculty Director in thinking about long-term strategy for the Stanford Arts Institute. They may also be called upon to assist with the implementation and evolution of new initiatives.
Marci Kwon is Assistant Professor of Art History and co-director of Stanford's Asian American Art Initiative
Manu Prakash
Associate Professor of Bioengineering
(by courtesy) Oceans and Biology
Senior Fellow, Woods Institute for the Environment
Elizabeth Schumann
Assistant Professor
Music
Billie Bennett Achilles Director of Keyboard Studies
Pfeiffer and Herold Families Professor, Professor of Biochemistry and, by courtesy, of Chemical and Systems Biology
IDP Advisory Group
The IDP Advisory Group assists the SAI Faculty Director and Associate Director in considering policy and implementation issues related to Honors in the Arts, the Interdisciplinary Arts Minor, and Arts Immersion courses.
Professor or Music and Director of CCRMA, Chris Chafe is a composer, improvisor, and cellist, developing much of
his music alongside research in network music performance, data sonification and new models for sound synthesis and music perception.
Gavin Jones, Frederick P. Rehmus Family Professor of Humanities, loves literature in all its forms, with a particular focus on the American tradition; on language politics and problems of social inequality; on the short story form; and on ways of bridging our critical and creative sides in the classroom.
Richard Nevle
Deputy Director
Earth Systems
Michael Rau
Assistant Professor
Theater & Performance Studies
Aileen Robinson
Assistant Professor
Theater & Performance Studies
Rose Salseda
Assistant Professor
Art & Art History
Active Capstone Advisors
- Terry Berlier (Professor of Art & Art History, and, by courtesy, Music)
- John Evans (Lecturer, Creative Writing)
- Rose Himber Howse (Lecturer, Feminist, Gender & Sexuality Studies)
- Sarah Frisch (Lecturer, Creative Writing)
- Gavin Jones (Department of English Chair, Frederick P. Rehmus Family Professor of Humanities)
- Jarosław Kapuściński (Associate Professor, Music)
- Young Jean Lee (Denning Family Professor of the Arts, Theater & Performance Studies)
- Mark McGurl (Albert Guérard Professor of Literature)
- Sara Michas-Martin (Lecturer, Creative Writing)
- Alexander Nemerov (Carl and Marilynn Thoma Provostial Professor in the Arts and Humanities)
- Cintia Santana (Senior Lecturer of Comparative Literature
- Nina Schloesser Tarano (Lecturer, Creative Writing)
- Dustin Schroeder (Associate Professor of Geophysics, of Electrical Engineering and Senior Fellow at the Woods Institute for the Environment)
- Shimon Tanaka (Lecturer, Creative Writing)
- Adam Tobin (Senior Lecturer of Art & Art History)
- Lauren Toomer (Lecturer, Art & Art History)
Inter-Departmental Mail Code
#2250
Office
(650) 497-9905
Fax
(650) 723-8231
ADDRESS
Stanford Arts
Littlefield Center
2nd Floor
365 Lasuen Street
Stanford, CA 94305
