Arts Institute

Welcome to the Arts Institute

It is a pleasure to welcome you to the Arts Institute of the College of Arts & Sciences as it enters its inaugural year.

The Arts Institute supports, promotes, and elevates all aspects of artistic inquiry and practice as expressed in the scholarship, initiatives, exhibitions, and performances of the faculty, staff, and students of Fairfield University, as well as visiting artists and Fellows within the arts, through a connected arts coalition across campus and into the broader community. In collaboration with our campus partners, we strive to offer experiences of the highest artistic quality by exploring the visual, performing, and literary arts to deepen and expand our students’ academic engagement.

The Arts Institute comprises the academic areas of the Visual, Performing, and Literary Arts of the College of Arts and Sciences, the Quick Center for the Performing Arts, and the Fairfield University Art Museum. We seek to foster excellence in visual, performing, and literary arts programming, involving dialogue with the arts, and emphasizing student engagement with the arts in fulfillment of the University’s mission.

Our goal is to ensure our students delve into the richness of the arts through curricular offerings and to discover the arts as experiences for their own sake during their years at Fairfield University and beyond graduation. The value of the arts helps us understand other people, provides an ability to understand context and makes us more alert and aware through critical thinking skills. Engagement with the arts is a creative and transformative experience that connects different academic disciplines in innovative and powerful ways. We are excited about this first year of the Arts Institute and the many ways it will impact our students and faculty, setting a strong foundation for years to come.

Katherine A. Schwab, PhD
Founding Director