Programs
The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Center for the Arts is the ampersand through which the five internationally recognized arts programs based at the University of Houston connect and communicate. The Mitchell Center puts artistic disciplines into dynamic conversation with each other and provides a platform for the resultant projects projects that seek to transcend and redefine the individual disciplines and produce work that is wholly new.
At the Mitchell Center we hand-pollinate adventurous artistic hybrids. We put memoirists & dancers in the same room. Sculptors & actors. Poets & cellists. Choreographers & architects. We stimulate exchanges amongst artists, developing new breeds of genre-busting artistic expression and audience experience in the process.
Using the flourish and connective magic of the ampersand, the Mitchell Center fuses bonds amongst the arts & fosters radically new experiences for contemporary audiences.
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Residencies & Special Projects
The Mitchell Center for the Arts invites dynamic contemporary artists for inter-disciplinary residencies on a semester basis. Residencies vary in length and type based on the project and artist. If the Mitchell Center is seen as the laboratory for artistic experimentation, these residencies are for the reagents, the new catalysts introduced into the mixture. The residencies provide an opportunity for a new dynamic reaction and what is produced is always a profound and welcome surprise.
The Mitchell Center’s special projects include thematic initiatives, temporary public art projects, ongoing artistic, academic and community-based research, organizational partnerships, and publications. We promote site-specific works whenever possible, taking art out of its traditional context and making it accessible to a range of audiences. Site-specificity highlights what art does best, engages the audience in a re-visioning of a familiar (or unfamiliar) space.
Past featured artists include Terry & Jo Harvey Allen, Philip Glass, Liz Lerman, ETHEL, Fritz Haeg, Big Dance Theater, The Art Guys, Ronald K. Brown, Negativland, Ridge Theater (commission), Dick Hebdige, Mark Doty, Joan Tower, The Center for Land Use Interpretation (commission), Marc Bamuthi Joseph, SIMPARCH (commission), and Jeremy Deller.
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Lectures & Conversations
The Mitchell Center hosts world renowned visitors – artists, writers, choreographers, academics, and musicians – for lectures about their work and how collaboration has influenced their artistic development.
Also featured are conversations amongst artists of various disciplines. These conversations stimulate cross-disciplinary communication centered on a topic, movement, or theme. These conversations allow for a deeper engagement and exploration with the works, themes, and movements.
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Curriculum & Scholarships
In 2008 the Center launched the Interdisciplinary Arts Minor (IART), which is available to all UH students. The minor includes immersion in the historic & contemporary examples of interdisciplinary arts & provides opportunities to engage in interdisciplinary projects, utilizing the funding & resources of the Mitchell Center. Many IART courses include additional sections for graduate students.
The Mitchell Center offers scholarships on an annual basis to graduate students in Art, Creative Writing, Music, and Theatre whose work or area of interest lies in cross-disciplinary collaboration. The Center also supports an annual Curatorial Fellowship position at Blaffer Art Museum.
