16 Columbia Artists Who Made History
From filmmakers to writers, sculptors and more, these groundbreaking Columbia artists broke ceilings and took the future with them.
Columbia School of the Arts has been a polestar for creative community and innovation in one of the world's greatest cultural capitals since 1965. In its past 60 years, the School of the Arts has educated more acclaimed theatre-makers, writers, visual artists, sound artists, and filmmakers than we can tout in a single article. As we come together to celebrate the School of the Arts entering its seventh brilliant decade, we're taking a look at just a few of the phenomenal alums whose work inspires and paves the road for all our graduates to come.
Joan Jonas '65 Pioneers Video Art and Performance Art
The New York arts scene of the 60s and 70s would not have the same legacy without the contributions of Visual Arts alum Joan Jonas '65, who is credited by MoMA as one of the founders of video art and performance art. After studying sculpture at Columbia, Jonas headed downtown, where she created the landmark art video Organic Honey's Visual Telepathy and launched a decades-long career. Jonas has represented the US at the Venice Biennale, was awarded the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum Lifetime Achievement Award, and received the Kyoto Prize. Excerpts from Jonas' Moving Off the Land II are on display at the Lenfest Center through the end of the year.
Louise Glück Becomes First American Woman to Win Nobel Prize for Poetry
Former Writing student Louise Glück is a titan of contemporary poetry. Her work, known for its sublime precision, existential themes, and total sensitivity, has won nearly every award for letters, including the Nobel Prize. Glück was the first American poet to receive the honor since T.S. Eliot in 1948. In her 20s, Glück attended night courses at Columbia for three years, where former Poetry faculty Léonie Adams and Stanley Kunitz became her mentors for life. Glück, who passed away in 2023, described herself as born to bear witness.
Laurie Anderson '72 (BC '69) Becomes NASA's First Artist-in-Residence
One of the leading multimedia and sound artists of our time, Visual Arts alum Laurie Anderson '72 (BC '69) was NASA's first artist-in-residence. Anderson spent two years at the agency, where she was given access to the nation's most prominent space research labs, including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The result was The End of the Moon, a violin performance filmed from the perspective of the instrument, looking over the edge of its horizon onto the starry stage lights above the audience. Anderson has also scored films by Wim Wenders and Jonathan Demme, written books, topped pop music charts, invented instruments and gone viral on TikTok when a clip of her composition "O Superman" became trending audio for the "But you don't know me" meme.
Kathryn Bigelow '81 Becomes the First Woman to Win an Oscar for Best Director
One of the most formidable glass ceilings in Hollywood broke in 2008, when Film alum Kathryn Bigelow '81 became the first woman to win the Academy Award for Best Director for The Hurt Locker. Based on embedded reporting by screenwriter Mark Boal, the film stars Jeremy Renner as a maverick in an improvised explosive disposal squad during the Iraq War. The Hurt Locker is also the first film directed by a woman to win Best Picture.
Ayad Akhtar '02 Becomes First Asian American and First Muslim to Win Pulitzer Prize for Drama
Disgraced came to Off-Broadway in the wake of 9/11 Islamophobia to portray the nuances of the Arab experience in America. Written by Film alum Ayad Akhtar '02, the play follows a lawyer as he grapples with the fallout of supporting an imam mired in controversy. Disgraced became the first play written by an Asian American, and the first play written by a Muslim, to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama.
Deborah Chow '03 Becomes First Woman to Direct Live-Action Star Wars Property
The Mandalorian might be best remembered for its era-defining superstars, Baby Yoda and Pedro Pascal, but it was also the first live action Star Wars property to be directed by a woman. Film alum Deborah Chow '03 staked her claim in the iconic franchise when she directed the third episode of the television series, "The Sin," where The Mandalorian, played by Pascal, tries to right a wrong he committed against Baby Yoda.
Jennifer Lee '05 Becomes First Woman to Direct a Disney Feature Film
Despite building an empire on the shoulders of its princesses, Disney films were directed exclusively by men until 2013, when Film alum Jennifer Lee '05 directed the generational megahit Frozen. With its massive success, Lee also became the first Columbia grad to lead a feature film that grossed over a billion dollars. She was the first woman to lead Disney Animation, and the first leader of Disney Animation to be a writer and not a visual artist.
New York City Names a Street After Rachel Chavkin '08
Broadway propelled Theatre alum Rachel Chavkin '08 into eternity when they renamed 48th Street Chavkin Way in 2024. At the time, Chavkin simultaneously had two musicals on Broadway: the long-running Tony winner and retelling of the Orpheus myth Hadestown and the musical Lempicka, which dramatized the life of prominent Art Deco artist Tamara de Lempicka.
Celine Song '14 Becomes First Asian Woman to Earn an Oscar Nomination for Best Screenplay
Past Lives, written by Theatre alum Celine Song '14, brought questions of identity and diaspora into the mainstream by making a story about immigration and self-determination into one of the century's most beautiful and haunting love stories so far. Song's stunning debut feature made the Korean-Canadian playwright the first Asian woman to earn a nomination for Best Screenplay at the Academy Awards. The film follows Nora, played by Greta Lee, as she is torn between two love interests who reflect different versions of herself: who she could have been had she stayed in Korea, and the life she chose as an artist in New York City.
Joyland by Saim Sadiq '19 Becomes First Pakistani Film to Screen at Cannes
Despite the fact that Joyland was initially banned from screening in its native Pakistan due to its portrayal of a queer love story, the feature—co-written and directed by Film alum Saim Sadiq '19—became the first Pakistani film to screen at the Cannes Film Festival in 2022, where it won the Jury Prize in the Un Certain Regard category. Joyland went on to become the first Pakistani film to be shortlisted for the Best Foreign Language Film nomination at the Academy Awards. The film began its life as Sadiq's thesis short film, Darling, and is named for the amusement park venue, Joyland, where the main characters perform hijra dance and embark on a tragic love affair.
Lin King '22 Translates First Book from Taiwan to Win National Book Award for Translated Literature
In 2024, the cozy, food-loving, yet weighty Taiwan Travelogue, written by Yáng Shuang-zi and translated from Mandarin Chinese by Writing alum Lin King '22, became the first novel from Taiwan to win the highest US award for translation, the National Book Award for Translated Literature. The novel uses the premise of a tourist story to examine the intersecting colonial legacies of Taiwan during the Japanese occupation of the 1930s and beyond.
Professor Paul Beatty Becomes First American to Win Man Booker Prize
In 2016, the eminent Man Booker Prize broke five decades of tradition and awarded an author born in the United States for the first time. The Booker Prize annually recognizes the best sustained work of the English language published in the UK and Ireland, and Writing Professor Paul Beatty was the first American to receive it, for his novel The Sellout. The satire follows a son as he plagiarizes his father's life in a sensational memoir. In The New York Times, critic Dwight Garner wrote, "The first 100 pages of The Sellout are the most caustic and the most badass first 100 pages of an American novel I’ve read in at least a decade."
Professor Jane Gaines Pioneers Feminist Film Theory
Film and Media Studies Professor Jane Gaines is an eminent critic and founder of feminist film theory, who created the landmark scholarly resource Women Film Pioneers Project. The digital publication and database advances research on the hundreds of overlooked women who worked behind the scenes of the silent film era. For her contributions to film scholarship, Gaines won the Distinguished Career Award from the Society for Cinema and Media Studies in 2018, and in 2022 was granted an honorary doctorate from the University of Stockholm in Sweden.
Professor David Henry Hwang Becomes First Asian American Playwright to Win a Tony Award
Broadway had never produced a play by an Asian American playwright before Theatre Professor David Henry Hwang's M. Butterfly in 1988. The play dramatizes the relationship between a French diplomat and the Chinese opera singer and spy who posed as a woman to seduce and extract information from the diplomat. M. Butterfly also became the first play written by an Asian American to win the Tony Award for Best Play. The gender-bending play sparked Hwang's decades-long Broadway career, which includes three Pulitzer finalist titles for M. Butterfly, Yellow Face, and Soft Power. The leading industry group for playwrights, the Dramatists Guild, awarded Hwang their Lifetime Achievement Award in 2025.
Professor Lynn Nottage Becomes First Woman to Win Pulitzer Prize for Drama Twice
Theatre Professor Lynn Nottage is not only the first woman to win the Pulitzer Prize for Drama twice, but remains the only woman to have done so. Nottage won in 2009 for her play Ruined, which interpolates Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children to the setting of the Ugandan Civil War, and won again in 2017 with Sweat, an exploration of the soul of the deindustrializing working class in Reading, Pennsylvania.
Professor Sarah Sze Installs Landmark NYC Public Art Exhibits
Visual Arts Professor Sarah Sze is responsible for some of the most viewed and recognizable works of public art in the world. Her installations at Chelsea's High Line, the 96th Street subway station, and LaGuardia Airport are witnessed and engaged with by millions of visitors to and residents of New York City every day. Sze's influence extends throughout the art world, and she has various major accolades to her name, including representing the US at the Venice Biennale, installing a solo exhibition at the Guggenheim, and receiving the MacArthur "Genius" Grant.