About

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.

SAI Spotlight

Hideo Mabuchi, wearing a blue and white striped button up, stands in a wooded grove, hands clasped behind his back

"I’m trying to move away from hybridizing art and science and toward resurrecting their last common ancestor"

In an interview with the Stanford Report, artist and applied physicist Hideo Mabuchi discusses his goals as the new Denning Family Faculty Director of SAI.

Read the interview

Staff

Hideo Mabuchi

Denning Family Director,
Stanford Arts Institute
Professor of Applied Physics
hmabuchi@stanford.edu

Bio

A physicist by training, Hideo Mabuchi explores a nexus of conventional scientific research, craft (as a dedicated ceramist and occasional textile maker), interdisciplinary humanities (from a home base of aesthetic philosophy, new materialism, and literary theory), and integrative education. Hideo teaches and directs a research laboratory at Stanford University as a Professor of Applied Physics. His group’s sponsored research focuses mainly on quantum optics and physics of computation; his personal research further extends to the science of traditional craft materials and processes. Hideo teaches undergraduate courses that center craft and student making, and/or bridge STEM fields with the arts and humanities. He is also a faculty representative on the university Public Art Committee. You can learn more about his multifaceted work on his website.

Jessi Pipert

Associate Director,
Stanford Arts Institute

jpipert@stanford.edu

Bio

Jessi Pipert is a theatermaker and historian with a specialization in activist performance. At the Stanford Arts Institute, she teaches the Interdisciplinary Arts Capstone Workshop and advises students in the Inter-Arts Minor and Honors in the Arts programs. Jessi was awarded her PhD from Stanford University's Theatre & Performance Studies Department in 2019, after having completed an MA in Theaterwissenschaft at the Freie Universität Berlin. Her book project, Acts of Commitment: Political Practice on the Agitprop Stage, explores how amateur agitprop performers and their audiences used theatre to develop their own political identities, modes of discourse, and strategies of resistance.

Heidi Lubin

Program Associate,
Stanford Arts Institute

hlubin@stanford.edu

Bio

Heidi Lubin earned her Masters of Fine Arts degree from the California College of the Arts and her Bachelors of Arts from Scripps College. In addition to having a graduate degree in the arts and an active art practice, she has twenty years of experience in the development, facilitation, and administration of art programs and exhibits for youth and adults in a variety of educational contexts including undergraduate and graduate programs, public schools, museums, and community based organizations.

Heidi currently serves on the City of San Jose’s Public Art Advisory Committee and just recently assumed the position of Program Associate at Stanford Arts Institute, supporting the administration and development of undergraduate interdisciplinary arts programs and initiatives.

Featured Events

Held on March 9 and 10, 2023, Research and the Artistic (Im)Pulse is a two-day symposium featuring five internationally renowned artists, all of whom engage artistic practice in connection with research, critique, and/or activism. Click here to view the schedule, meet the presenting artists, and reserve your ticket.

Inter-Departmental Mail Code

#2250

Office

(650) 497-9905

Fax

(650) 723-8231

Email

stanfordarts@stanford.edu

ADDRESS

Stanford Arts
Littlefield Center
2nd Floor
365 Lasuen Street
Stanford, CA 94305