Princeton University To Celebrate New Lewis Arts Center With Festival Of The Arts

PRINCETON, NJ — Princeton University will celebrate the opening of the new Peter B. Lewis Center for the Arts complex with a multi-day Festival of the Arts that will feature more than 100 concerts, plays, readings, dance performances, art exhibitions, multidisciplinary presentations, film screenings, community workshops and other events.

The celebration will take place Oct. 5-8 at the Lewis Center for the Arts. The festivities are open to the public, with most events free and a small number of events requiring tickets. The most up-to-date listing of events can be found at LCAopening.princeton.edu.

“The creative and performing arts inspire innovative thinking and a deeper understanding of the human condition—they are tremendously important to the University, and an integral part of the education we provide to our students,” Princeton University President Christopher L. Eisgruber said. “The opening of the new Lewis Arts complex is an extraordinary milestone for Princeton that will usher in a brilliant new era of arts scholarship, training, exploration, and performance. I am grateful to Peter B. Lewis, Peter’s family, and the other donors who helped us to realize this dream. I hope that the campus and local community will join us for the opening festival and for years to come at this splendid new home for artistic expression and imaginative activity.”

The most up-to-date listing of Festival events is available at LCAopening.princeton.edu.

Belgium-based Rosas dance company performing A Love Supreme, an evening-length dance work by Anne Teresa De Keersmaeker and Salva Sanchis set to music by John Coltrane. Photo courtesy of Rosas dance company.

Two-time Obie Award-winning playwright Branden Jacobs-Jenkins whose new play Gurls, a contemporary adaptation of Euripides’ The Bacchae, will have its world premiere at the Festival of the Arts atPrinceton. Photo courtesy the MacArthur Foundation.

“At this pivotal moment in Princeton’s history, its physical campus, its curriculum, and its relationship to the wider community, we are throwing open our doors to celebrate the arts,” Lewis Center Chair Michael Cadden said. “We want to share our excitement about this new chapter in the life of the University with friends near and far, from our past and from our present. The light-filled spaces of Steven Holl’s design of the new Lewis Arts complex will fire the imaginations of our current and future students, faculty, guest artists, and audiences. This is an arts laboratory worthy of Princeton’s status as a world-class research university – a symbol, in Paul Muldoon’s words, of ‘Princeton in the service of the imagination.’ We invite the world to come party with us – both in and around our new buildings and at events across a campus now fully mapped with arts venues.”

The new complex along Alexander Street and University Place, adjacent to McCarter Theatre Center, was designed by the award-winning Steven Holl Architects. The new complex expands the performance, rehearsal, and teaching spaces for the arts in new facilities. These new facilities supplement existing teaching, exhibition, practice, and performance spaces. The complex is named after former University Trustee Peter B. Lewis, who helped pay for the project with a $101 million gift to the university in 2006.

"We are delighted to offer to the University, the Princeton community, and our many friends and guests a veritable feast of artistic delights,” Princeton University Music Department Chair Wendy Heller said. “We celebrate not only the opening of these beautiful spaces and what they promise our students for the future, but the extraordinary accomplishments of all of our students and faculty, past and present, in the performing and creative arts."

Grammy Award-winning composer and Princeton Professor of Music Steven Mackey whose opera for electric guitar, Orpheus Unsung, with production concept and direction by Mark DeChiazza, will be performed at the festival. Photo by Kah Leong Poon.

Norwegian Baroque ensemble Barokksolistene will be among the artists featured at the Festival. Photo by Tor Brødreskift.

At 145,000 square feet, the complex includes three technically advanced, sustainably designed buildings: the Wallace Dance Building and Theater, the New Music Building, and the Arts Tower.

The Wallace Dance Building and Theater houses the Lewis Center for the Arts’ Programs in Dance, Theater, and Music Theater, as well as the Princeton Atelier, which have moved from 185 Nassau Street.

The New Music Building enables the Department of Music to expand its instructional, practice, and research facilities, supplementing the Woolworth Center for Musical Studies. The Lewis Center’s Program in Visual Arts will present exhibitions in a new gallery in the Arts Tower while expanding at 185 Nassau Street.

The Lewis Center’s Program in Creative Writing maintains its seminar classrooms and library in New South.
The Wallace Dance Building and Theater includes the Wallace Theater, a black box theater seating up to 150 in flexible configurations, and the Hearst Dance Theater, seating up to 120. Both venues feature LED theatrical lighting, one of the first educational performing arts facilities in the region to adopt this technology. This building also includes several new dance and theater studios.

The New Music Building houses the Lee Music Performance and Rehearsal Room, providing rehearsal space for the Princeton University Orchestra and other ensembles, as well as space for chamber concerts. It also features a jazz studies studio, among several specialized teaching facilities, and practice rooms equipped with dozens of new pianos from Steinway & Sons.

Poet Amal Kassir, a Syrian-American international spoken word artist, is one of 12 poets from around the world to be featured at the PrincetonPoetry Festival. Photo courtesy the artist.

Festival participants will have an opportunity to participate in a number of activities including an African dance master class with faculty member Dyane Harvey-Salaam. Photo by Crystal Liu.

The complex also includes the CoLab, a flexible “white box” space for artistic and cross-disciplinary collaborations, and the Arts Tower, which includes the Hurley Gallery, administrative offices, and additional studios.

The three buildings are connected at ground level by the Forum, an 8,000 square-foot open indoor gathering space that will serve as as a lobby for the various arts venues in the complex and as an additional informal performance space. Above the Forum is an outdoor plaza with a reflecting pool. Skylights in the pool filter natural light into the Forum below.

Holl, an internationally renowned architect, is a 2012 American Institute of Architects Gold Medalist, who has designed landmark arts venues around the world, including the forthcoming expansion of the Kennedy Center in Washington, D.C. In 2014, he received the Praemium Imperiale award for his contributions to the development, promotion, and progress of the arts.

The Lewis Arts complex anchors a 22-acre development, the largest undertaken in the University’s history, that also includes Cargot Brasserie and the Dinky Bar & Kitchen, located in two renovated former train station buildings and operated by Fenwick Hospitality Group. Additionally, residents and visitors can reach Princeton by train at the new Princeton Station, operated by New Jersey Transit.

The station features a heated and air-conditioned indoor waiting room, outdoor plaza, bike share station, and a new Wawa convenience store. The renovations to the former train station buildings and the new Princeton Station and Wawa were designed by architect Rick Joy. The complex is surrounded by a park-like setting with extensive landscaped plazas, pathways and green spaces.

Internationally acclaimed artist Maya Lin will create work for the grounds adjacent to the new arts complex, the university recently announced. Lin is a 2016 recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom and first achieved national recognition for her design of the Vietnam Veterans Memorial in Washington, D.C.

To learn more about the Lewis Center for the Arts and the more than 100 public theater and dance performances, exhibitions, readings, screenings, concerts and lectures presented each year by the Lewis Center, most of them free, visit arts.princeton.edu.

To learn more about the Department of Music’s renowned music programs and ensembles, and to experience its diverse range of concerts and lectures by accomplished students, award-winning faculty and celebrated guest artists, visit music.princeton.edu.

The attached images were provided by Princeton University