Partner With Us

The Lewis Center for the Arts invites exciting proposals from all areas of the University for arts-related projects that might come to fruition in the coming years. Princeton has plenty of events already. We’re looking for projects outside the ordinary run of things — particularly engaging collaborations with the potential to involve a broad range of students, as well as faculty and staff, in something that might not otherwise happen. We are especially interested in interdisciplinary projects leading to the creation of new work.

Proposals should include a brief narrative of the nature of the project, a description of how students would be involved, the amount of the request ($5000-$50,000), a rough breakdown of the estimated budget, and an indication of how the project would enliven the cultural life of the University and the wider community. Requests should be made at least several months prior to project implementation. Please send proposals to lewiscenter@princeton.edu.

Since it was established in 2007, the Lewis Center for the Arts has supported partnerships with, among others, the Center for African American Studies, the School of Architecture, the Department of Art and Archaeology, the Carl Fields Center, Communiversity, the Council of the Humanities, the School of Engineering, the Princeton Environmental Institute, Forbes College, the Program in Hellenic Studies, L’Avant-Scene (Department of French and Italian), the Department of Music, the Department of Physics, the Princeton University Art Museum, and McCarter Theatre Center.

 

Past Projects

Der Bourgeois Bigwig

The Lewis Center and the Department of Music collaborated to present the world premiere of Der Bourgeois Bigwig, a new adaptation by James Magruder of the Molière comedy Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme written to complement Richard Strauss’ well-known orchestral suite and incidental music from 1912.  Tim Vasen, director of the Program in Theater, and Michael Pratt, director of the Program in Musical Performance, joined together with the idea to unite the now-famous music with a new script, and commissioned Magruder to pen the new version based on Hugo von Hofmannsthal and Richard Strauss’ Der Bürger als Edelmann, which was itself an early twentieth-century musical adaptation of Molière’s seventeenth-century comédie-ballets.  The production brought together some forty-two musicians, fourteen actors, and many other student and faculty contributors to give the new play its world premiere at the Berlind Theatre at McCarter Theatre Center in November 2012.

“Memory and the Work of Art”

In 2011, The Lewis Center for the Arts partnered with the Princeton University Art Museum, the Princeton University Council of the Humanities, the Princeton Neuroscience Institute, and the Princeton Departments of Psychology and Molecular Biology and 10 other community and university collaborators to present a series of exhibitions, concerts, performances, readings and lectures to mark the tenth anniversary of September 11, 2001. These presentations, across greatly varied disciplines, sought to address the same question: how do the arts shape our collective memory of the past, and how does art decipher loss and inform our experience of global events? Presentations ranged from neuroscience lectures to theatrical performances and musical concerts to guest speakers from a host of disciplines, most of which were free and open to the community.  In total, the partnership resulted in over 30 special events in commemoration of this national tragedy and in exploration of this humanitarian and scientific question.

Seuls en Scène – Princeton French Theater Festival

In September 2012 and 2013, the Lewis Center, the Department of French and Italian, and the student theater troupe L’Avant-Scène presented the ‘Princeton French Theater Festival,’ which brought  a new generation of French actors and directors to the University and local community, creating exciting opportunities for both audiences and student performers alike.  These performers brought productions ranging from historical to autobiographical, all offering a distinctly French theatrical performance idiom, and all performed in their original French.  These performances were supplemented by workshops taught by the artists, available for students in the Program in Theater and Department of French and Italian, and other opportunities to learn and gain exposure to this wonderful and unique theatrical culture. Additional support was provided by Cultural Services of the French Embassy.