The School of the Arts Celebrates 60 Years!
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Slide 1: Students in a fiction seminar (1972-1973)
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Slide 2: Broadway actress and School of the Arts Professor Gertrude Lawrence teaches a class
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Slide 3: Students in figure drawing class
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Slide 4: Student at work in editing room (1972-1973)
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Slide 5: Behind the scenes of 'The Lily and the Scorpion,' student film written and directed by Charlie Netto '24 and produced by Sharon Mayo '24
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Slide 6: A student develops film photography in the School of the Arts darkroom
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Slide 7: Professor and LTAC Director Susan Bernofsky in class with students
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Slide 8: 'Fucking A,' MFA Acting Cohort of 2024 Thesis Production
2025 marks the 60th anniversary of the School of the Arts. Established by the Trustees of Columbia University in 1965, we remain more dedicated than ever to being a formidable center of art-making and art-education. At Columbia, artists working across all disciplines have the unique opportunity to study and create in a vibrant community, learning alongside one another in one of the world’s greatest cultural capitals: New York City.
This year, we are celebrating the work of incredible artists and scholars from our past and present, across every medium imaginable. From welcoming back illustrious alumni like Joan Jonas ’65 to share reflections on her creative practice and extraordinary career; to seeing our artists shine on global stages, like Jocelyn Bioh ’08 at the Tony Awards and Lin King ’22 at the National Book Awards; to our yearly film festival that has launched filmmakers like Saim Sadiq ’19 to success at Cannes, Venice, and beyond, we will be celebrating this exceptional past as we build our great future.
Please be part of this year of tribute, as we honor and support the work of our talented students, faculty, and alumni, and imagine possibilities for the future. Their stories and artwork are changing the world for the better—as they have for the last 60 years—and will continue to do so in the years to come.
Artist Profiles
ALUMNI THROUGH TIME
Take a closer look at some of our '60s and '70s alums!
Alumni Weekend: October 3-4, 2025
Check out some photos from the weekend below!
Upcoming Events
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Recent Alum News
On September 26, 2026, the Jessica Ann Peavy Gallery welcomed Visual Arts alum Aristotle Forrester '24 as a newly represented artist with a celebration to mark the opening of his first solo exhibition, Blood and Water. Works featured in the exhibition—on view until November 7, 2026—are poignant, bold, colorful, and richly layered in both medium and meaning.
The novel, published by Little, Brown and Company, tells a multi-generational story which grounds itself in the myth of The Minotaur.
In 1919, Tejano legislator José Tomás Canales had gathered evidence of the Texas Rangers’ violence against Mexican workers and small landowners. Yet when the moment came to confront two leaders, he failed to call them to the stand. In These Bones Can Speak, Writing alum Adin Dobkin '20 investigates the forces behind that decision, as well as the political system that constrained Canales’s pursuit of accountability.
