Wesleyan Center for the Arts

This fall, in collaboration with Waterhouse Cifuentes Design (@waterhousecifuentes ), the Center for the Arts is launching a visual “thumbprint” that brings the Wesleyan University (@wesleyan_u ) wordmark’s open shield into conversation with the shape of our buildings' limestone bricks. Colors have been assigned to the Center for the Arts (red), the artistic disciplines taught at Wesleyan including dance (aqua), music (yellow), theater (blue), visual art (orange), and the Creative Campus Initiative (pink). Like the bricks, these colors and the disciplines they represent are the most basic elements of the CFA. Their simplicity belies the depth and range of possible interactions and exchanges that might be achieved by bringing these disciplines together, a kind of work happening all the time at the Center for the Arts and in the way the CFA team helps to center art across campus at large. With this new visual identity, we’re highlighting the many levels at which the arts are folded into life at Wesleyan: through special exhibitions and performances, visiting artist residencies, presentations that take place as part of the arts curriculum, and the way arts practice is an essential component of faculty research. Joshua Lubin-Levy (@jlubinlevy ) ’06, Director #WesCreative @wes_alumni

inDANCE (@indanceglobal ) performed the world premiere of the work "ROWDIES IN LOVE" by award-winning choreographer Hari Krishnan, Professor of Dance and Feminist, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, and Co-Chair and Professor of Global South Asian Studies, at @wesleyan_u in December 2024. The company returns to the Doris Duke Theatre at Jacob’s Pillow (@jacobspillow ) in Becket, Massachusetts this weekend (Friday, May 1 through Sunday, May 3, 2026), where the work was first incubated. Performers include Visiting Professor of Dance Eury German (@eurygerm ) ’16 and Spenser Stroud (@spstroud ) ’22, with Lighting Design by Assistant Professor of the Practice in Dance Chelsie McPhilimy (@cmcphilimy ). Learn more at the link in our bio. #WesCreative @wes_alumni

The 23rd annual Wesleyan Jazz Orchestra Weekend will feature the first-ever joint faculty concert with nine musicians and teachers from the Music Department on Saturday, April 25, 2026. Two of the artists—drummer Pheeroan akLaff (@paklaff ) and guitarist Tony Lombardozzi—are retiring from teaching private lessons this academic year after several decades at @wesleyan_u . “Everybody [in the concert] is a jazz musician, and focuses on teaching that aspect of African American-derived music at Wesleyan,” said vibraphonist and Professor of Music and African American Studies Jay Hoggard ’76, MA ’91 (@hoggard.jay ). Performers include Noah Baerman (@nbpontificates ) on piano, Giacomo Gates (@giacomogates ) on vocals, Roy Wiseman on bass, Darius Jones (@imdariusjones ) on alto saxophone, Eric Charry on guitar, and Alcee Chriss (@doctorchriss92 ) on piano and organ. Read more in the Wesleyan Connection at the link in our bio. #WesCreative @wes_alumni @amhistorymuseum @musicatmemorial @maryhalvorsonmusic @whoismgmt @milesdavis @theloniousmonk @charlesmingusofficial @oldmansco @ctstatehousatonic @TheNewSchool @pegasuswarning @eclipticalia @baumsky

Guitarist Tony Lombardozzi, pianist Noah Baerman (@nbpontificates ), drummer Pheeroan akLaff (@paklaff ), bassist Roy Wiseman, and vocalist Giacomo Gates (@giacomogates ) rehearse "A Felicidade" by Antônio Carlos Jobim (@jobimoficial ), Baerman's new tune "Cardinal Wisdom," and "Four" by @milesdavis for the @wesleyan_u Jazz Faculty Concert. These musicians and teachers from Wesleyan University’s Music Department will be joined by their colleagues Eric Charry on guitar, Alcee Chriss (@doctorchriss92 ) on piano and organ, Jay Hoggard (@hoggard.jay ) on vibraphone, and Darius Jones (@imdariusjones ) on alto saxophone to perform together for the first time in various combinations as the featured artists of the 23rd annual Wesleyan Jazz Orchestra Weekend on Saturday, April 25, 2026 at 7pm in Crowell Concert Hall. The concert will open with a 45-minute set performed by members of the Wesleyan Jazz Orchestra, directed by Hoggard. Learn more at the link in our bio. #WesCreative

A Letter from Kiara Benn '20, Assistant Director for Programming/Assistant Curator for Performing Arts, Center for the Arts Last year, artist Jonathan González sent me their new book, Ways to Move: Black Insurgent Grammars, asking me to sit with it and notice what surfaced. As I sat with the text, which depicted assemblages drawn from González’s life, histories of placemaking through methods of refusal, and future imaginings of convening, I found myself returning again and again to González’s attention to land and water as sites of history, rupture, and possibility. Those feelings will shape a day of gathering, listening, and movement on Friday, April 24, 2026. Rather than situating the program in a “room,” we chose to situate ourselves on a piece of land with a history of resistance, and to sit with our surroundings and the echoes of those who have cultivated Black spaces, allowing place itself to become an active collaborator. At the Cross Street Dance Studio and within the Beman Triangle, you are invited to consider how histories of Black placemaking, both intentional and improvised, continue to resonate. These sites hold layered narratives of community and care, reminding us that land is not fixed, but alive with memory and ongoing transformation. In this way, the day rejects singularity. It asks us to shift away from binaries and toward multiplicity: to notice what happens when we gather across time, space, and discipline. The progression of the day is an attempt to construct place together, and propose a map towards resistance. Each event is a step toward placemaking together with the hope that when we leave the place we’ve created together, that it continues on with each of us. These include a reading and performance workshop led by González that invites attendees to engage with the land through the lens of his book and embodied reflective prompts, and a conversation between González and Darius Jones, Assistant Professor of Music, as they think through their respective practices as insurgent propositions. I hope you will join us for this unfolding (link in bio), a convergence where the act of coming together becomes, itself, a form of possibility.

Each spring, @wesleyan_u 's Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery (@wes_zilkhagallery ) features work by the graduating class of seniors in the Art Studio Program of the Department of Art and Art History. Works on view and exhibited artists change on a weekly basis. Senior Thesis Exhibitions Week One features works by Matt Aljian, Quinn Frankel (@quinnfrankel.art ), Vansh Kapoor, Lukas Shvetsov, and Tita, on display through Sunday, March 29, 2026. #WesCreative

The Center for the Arts launched a new collaborative development residency program, “In Process,” which invites visiting artists to create and test new works. The series began with the first public showing of an excerpt from a new performance from choreographer Anh Vo (@anhqvo ). Learn more in the @wesleyan_u Connection at the link in our bio. #WesCreative @wes_alumni @jlubinlevy @jjjessicapppavone @perceptionsct @unesco @mercetrust @mosnave @roulette_intermedium @participantafterdark @alhenalhena

Now through Sunday, March 1, 2026 is the final weekend to view the pairing of Robert Lostutter’s paintings and drawings from the late 1960s onward with Kristi Cavataro’s recent stained-glass sculptures, including this new piece created for the @wesleyan_u exhibition in the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery (@wes_zilkhagallery ). Learn more at the link in our bio. Photo by Dario Lasagni (@dariolasagni ). #WesCreative @wes_alumni @bchaffee1 @warholfoundation @corbettvsdempsey @ramikencrucible @galeriecapitain

What becomes possible when systems break down? "Whale Fall with Me," the first major solo exhibition by @wesleyan_u Center for the Arts 2025–2026 Artist in Residence mayfield brooks (@mayfieldbrookz ), is the culmination of the artist’s multi-year research on the life and death cycle of whales, and features a newly-commissioned 14-minute film, created from a September 2025 site-specific performance on the 1885 Tall Ship Wavertree in the care of the South Street Seaport Museum (@seaportmuseum ) in New York, and at Rockaway Beach in Queens, New York where the artist lives. On display in the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery (@wes_zilkhagallery ) through Sunday, March 1, 2026. Learn more about brook's residency at the link in our bio. #WesCreative Images: installation of mayfield brooks, "Whale Fall with Me," 2026, in the Ezra and Cecile Zilkha Gallery at Wesleyan University's Center for the Arts (@wescfa ). Courtesy the artist. Photos by Dario Lasagni (@dariolasagni ).

ZOOM TALK TIME! Registration link in bio Join us for Session 6, featuring a conversation across queer and trans art making, movement, and environmental justice. Beginning from Bigé’s idea of movementements (these “movements in me that are not of me”), which brings attention to how certain forms of dance (collective improvisations, somatic practices, dissident choreographies) work as potent antidotes to the collective numbness to a world in crisis—we will explore questions of how art and unravel and help us to unlearn the capitalist and colonial regimes that perpetuate an extractive relation to the earth. Whether exploring art making in Alaska, catching breath at the bottom of the ocean floor, or ways of dancing-feeling-thinking entangled with the Earth’s uprisings—this session’s presenters constellate around questions of how to move and make within the folds of ecological ruin.

How do we understand the world around us? For Assistant Professor of the Practice in Dance and African American Studies Joya Powell, the answer lies in the body. Understanding the body in an embodied practice is so crucial to being human,” Powell says. “It’s so crucial to the college experience and beyond.” Celebrating the 20th anniversary of her Movement of the People Dance Company, Powell brought her socially-conscious choreography to the stage of Wesleyan's Center for the Arts Theater, inviting students to engage in a process where joy serves as a powerful form of connection and release. It is a philosophy that draws the majority of Wesleyan students—regardless of their major—into the dance studio to share their voice and find new ways to connect with each other. #ArtsAtWesleyan

Next Friday Feb 6, 12pm est In-person and on Zoom Join us for the fifth event in the AFTERWORDS: entanglement series featuring Natalie Diaz and Adrienne Edwards reflecting on their ongoing collaboration. Co-sponsored by ICPP and @wescfa