UCLA Reveals Plan to Merge Fine Arts and Science Colleges

UCLA Chancellor Charles E. Young announced a “radical” proposal Wednesday to merge the university’s College of Fine Arts into a reconstituted College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. He said the consolidation was needed to respond to changes in the local arts scene that offer the university a chance to vastly improve its arts programs.

Because of a number of recent developments--including industrialist Norton Simon’s disclosure that he will donate his world-renowned art collections to UCLA--Young said that the university needs to take steps to become “second to none” among institutions offering comprehensive performing and visual arts programs.

The proposed consolidation, however, would come at the expense of undergraduate programs in the performing arts. Enrollment in such programs would be trimmed sharply, and greater emphasis would be placed on undergraduate academic courses, such as art history, musicology and criticism, Young said. At the graduate level, meanwhile, performing arts offerings would be expanded through the creation of a new Graduate School of Performance Arts.

Robert H. Gray, dean of the College of Fine Arts, who announced Wednesday that he is resigning in June and returning to teaching, said a major weakness of the college has been its professional programs in the performing arts. The college has been hampered by a lack of performance facilities, such as dance studios and theaters, where faculty and students could develop original works.

Gray said his resignation is not related to the proposed reorganization. He said he plans to take a year’s leave before returning to UCLA to teach design.

Young said no changes in the number of full-time professors would result from the proposed restructuring. However, it was unclear what impact the proposal may have on the lecturers, artists and musicians who teach many of the undergraduate courses.

Gray said that the college’s faculty are “very concerned” about the proposal, although they have not had an opportunity to thoroughly review it.

The consolidation grew out of recommendations from a university task force formed to chart a new course for the university by the year 2000. Young said the task force concluded that it was imperative to reorganize the 25-year-old arts college, which he described as a very good institution that was “not as good as it should be.”

Young’s proposal calls for merging the College of Fine Arts with the College of Letters and Science, resulting in a new College of Letters, Arts and Sciences. He also proposed phasing out costly undergraduate degree programs in the performing arts in favor of creating a new Graduate School of Performance Arts.

According to Young, the existing structure of the college has not allowed either its professional performing arts components, such as the dance program, or its academic programs, such as art history or musicology, to develop to their full potential. “Excellence in certain areas,” he said in a separate written statement, “has been achieved . . . in spite of the college structure.”

In the new college, the faculties for performance arts and academic courses will be kept separate. The change, he said, will help alleviate conflicts that developed between the academicians and the artists on the college faculty.

New Resources

The revamped college will help the university take advantage of new resources in the local arts community, Young said. In addition to the probability that the university will become the recipient of the Simon art treasures--which Young said would make UCLA home to the richest university-based art collection in the world--the chancellor noted that UCLA’s recent acquisition of the Doolittle Theater in Hollywood and the Getty Trust’s plan to build a new art center in Brentwood “make it possible for us to potentially achieve more.”

Currently, 2,000 students are enrolled in the College of Fine Arts, 1,350 as undergraduates and 650 graduate students. The arts division of the merged college would have room for about 350 graduate students and 750 to 1,000 undergraduate students. The proposed graduate School of Performance Arts would enroll up to 650 students.

Young said he hoped the reorganization could be in place by next fall, but that a transition period of four to five years would be needed to phase out the undergraduate performance arts majors and build up the enrollment in the new graduate school.

The proposal must be approved by the college faculty and the academic senate.