Hello to our students, colleagues, and friends
Confluence: That’s been the byword for the third year of our school, now newly named the Sidney and Lois Eskenazi School of Art, Architecture + Design, following the generous donation from the well-known philanthropists and lovers of the arts. The fact that we’ve changed our school’s name three times in three years points to how rapidly we’ve been developing and evolving.
But this year, all the fast moving currents that have carried us so far have come together and slowed down just enough that we’ve had a chance to reflect.
It is the perfect time to do so, because next year marks Indiana University’s 200th anniversary and the 125th year of the origins of our school and the arts at IU. As you’ll read later in this report, we plan to do a lot of celebrating.
One way we took stock of the past and planned for the future was through drafting our inaugural strategic plan for the next half decade, which will be released in fall 2019. One of the most inspiring results of the strategic planning process is that it got all of us—faculty, students, staff, alumni, and advisors—to think about what we value. Although we are still finalizing the list, I’m proud that we have agreed that we stand for principles such as heritage and innovation, creative risktaking, disciplinary excellence, interdisciplinary collaboration, inclusion and advocacy, and ethical practice and sustainability. Looking toward the future, we will continue to reaffirm these ideals.
I’ll close with some equally inspiring words from the past. As IU’s tenth president, William Lowe Bryan, said almost one hundred years ago: “I believe that we need beauty as much as we need truth. I believe that the university needs artists as much as it needs scholars.”
As a community of artists and scholars, makers and doers, we reaffirm our allegiance to beauty and truth.
Peg Faimon
Founding Dean and Professor