Arts and Performance

Calling All Artists

Every year more than 500,000 people flock to campus to take in more than 1,000 visual, performing and media arts events created by both professionals and gifted students. As a creator or a spectator, your artistic spirit will soar in UCLA’s thriving arts community, in the cultural capital of Los Angeles.

Students in a variety of artistic environments express their creativity.

On any given day, you’ll find accomplished student productions and exhibitions enlivening UCLA’s performance and art spaces. Dancers, musicians, actors, artists, filmmakers, designers and architects transform the energy and expertise nurtured in their classrooms and studios into works that take hold of audiences in galleries, on screen and on stage.

UCLA has a rich tradition of student-led arts organizations that provide opportunities for students to gain experience producing their own events. Student-run events include Spring Sing and Arts in the Union. Weekly and monthly happenings include concerts at Kerckhoff Coffee House. Whether it’s a cappella voices, hip-hop poets, jazz musicians, Bollywood dancers, stand-up comics or crowd-pleasing musicians, our students shine.

Westwood’s Art World

UCLA’s campus and its surroundings in Westwood present the perfect stage for world-class performances and works of art to shine. UCLA is the only UC with three professional schools dedicated to the arts — the School of the Arts and Architecture, the Herb Alpert School of Music, and the School of Theater, Film and Television. Creativity is front and center at UCLA, fueled by the belief in the artist's special ability to change the world and usher in the future.

A female student works on a ceramics project.

Curated Experiences

UCLA’s Center for the Art of Performance curates live events at Royce Hall and beyond, where music and dance legends perform — from jazz and bossa nova to ballet, flamenco and everything in between — and award-winning writers engage crowds in captivating conversations. The Fowler Museum at UCLA focuses on works representing global arts and cultures, while the Hammer Museum highlights artists with unique perspectives and hosts cutting-edge programming that includes lectures, film series and musical performances. Both museums are free and open to the public, and CAP UCLA offers discounts to students.

A blurry silhouette of two students as they rehearse to an empty audience hall.

Live Theater and Film

In Westwood, you’ll also find one of L.A.’s most prominent theaters: the Geffen Playhouse. 130,000 theatergoers make their way to the Geffen each year to take in star-studded productions of both classic and contemporary plays in an intimate setting. Meanwhile, movie theaters in Westwood Village host red carpet premieres. The Regency Village Theatre now operates where the historic Fox Village Theatre has dazzled audiences since opening in 1931. When you step outside the classroom, you won’t have to go far for exposure to a cultural and artistic epicenter.

Research in the Arts

Interdisciplinary research initiatives across the arts at UCLA foster connections between the arts and other disciplines, too, bringing together creativity and research to address issues such as global health, climate change, urbanism and other critical challenges of the 21st century. UCLA Arts’ upper-division undergraduate course “10 Questions” is one such effort to use the arts to examine the big questions — “What is justice?” “What is love?” “What is creativity?” — that humankind has always asked itself, in an open forum that bridges the gap between the classroom and the public.

ART & ARC: 10 Questions

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Beyond Westwood

You can also venture beyond Westwood, where the city of L.A. awaits.

The Walt Disney concert hall in downtown Los Angeles.

Museums

From the Getty and the Skirball, each just a short distance from campus, to the Los Angeles County Museum of Art and The Broad, world-renowned museums and cultural centers abound. The Underground Museum, the Institute of Contemporary Art, Los Angeles, the Japanese American National Museum, Highways Performance Space, the Museum of Contemporary Art and the Museum of Latin American Art welcome all who wish to traverse the vastness of L.A.’s cultural landscape.

Venues

Take a weekend to explore and you will find dozens of concerts, performances and art exhibitions that captivate and enrapture. Famed venues and institutions such as the Novo at L.A. Live in downtown L.A., the Walt Disney Concert Hall, the Hollywood Bowl and the Greek Theatre welcome artists from all over the world to perform and entertain on their glittering stages.

Community

The arts at UCLA are also defined by deep engagement with communities throughout Los Angeles County, from Santa Clarita to the South Bay, from Venice to Pasadena. Arts outreach programs feature performances and presentations of work by members of underrepresented communities and create opportunities for students to gain experience in the city’s leading cultural institutions. The UCLA arts community is dedicated to providing arts education to populations who have been poorly served. Bruins believe the transformative power of the arts can enrich the lives of everyone.

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