ASU connects students with L.A. opportunities through LACMA partnership and Film Spark initiative

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The Los Angeles County Museum of Art and the ASU Herberger Institute announced an unprecedented partnership in May 2018 designed to increase diversity in the museum field. This new partnership bolsters the presence the institute already has in the L.A. area through the School of Film, Dance and Theatre’s Film Spark initiative, located at ASU’s Santa Monica Center.

L.A. is one of the world’s most important cultural hubs, and building partnerships allows Herberger Institute programs, students, faculty and alumni to be connected to and integrated to this creative center.

Herberger Institute aims to be a primary driver for regional social change, social and cultural learning and appropriate economic development. These connections boost Herberger Institute’s efforts to ensure that all students and alumni, regardless of social background, have an equal chance to help tell our nation’s — and our world’s — stories.

LACMA Partnership

ASU and LACMA partner together to promote diversity in the museum sector

Los Angeles County Museum of Art, the largest encyclopedic art museum in the western United States, and the Herberger Institute, the largest comprehensive design and arts school in the nation, are launching a partnership to establish a program that combines academic training and work experience to advance the careers of a new generation of curators, directors and other museum professionals who are committed to disrupting and diversifying the field.

“Both ASU and LACMA are laser-focused on creating new educational opportunities, encouraging broader public engagement and advancing knowledge,” said Michael Crow, president of ASU. “We are both seeking a more powerful role for arts and culture in public life and in our democracy. We are both committed to disrupting old models — in higher education and museums — to increase equity and inclusion and engage new perspectives, cultures and backgrounds. This program expands our ability to introduce new ideas and pursue new answers to serve a changing America.”

The LACMA-ASU Master’s Fellowship in Art History combines rigorous academic instruction through traditional masters-level coursework with on-the-job work experience at LACMA or Herberger Institute’s ASU Art Museum. Participation in this three-year program means that students will not have to choose between work and getting a degree, in addition to accelerating their careers.

“Too many talented students from diverse backgrounds get stuck or delayed in finding their place as curators in art museums due to the lack of resources or the difficulty of pursuing the very long road to earning a graduate degree and accumulating enough work experience to advance in our field and make a difference,” said Michael Govan, LACMA CEO and Wallis Annenberg Director. “This partnership and program will help open the pipeline for more talent and diverse ideas to feed the art museums of the near future.”

In addition to working at one of the museums while earning their master’s degree in art history, the cohort of fellows will gain access to resources from both LACMA and Herberger Institute, including ASU’s internationally recognized art faculty and LACMA’s renowned staff, curators and educators.

Building on the ASU School of Art’s distinguished art history program in Herberger Institute, the LACMA-ASU Master’s Fellowship will emphasize museum context, object-based learning, collaborative working skills and global perspective, grounded in a framework of equity and inclusion. The fellowship is intended to complement and expand the value of other important programs at LACMA — such as the Mellon Undergraduate Curatorial Fellowship and the LACMA Emerging Art Professionals (LEAP) Fellowship — to help diversify the ranks of curators and other professionals in art museums.

“I’m excited about the difference we can make together,” said Steven J. Tepper, dean of the Herberger Institute. “The School of Art, led by Joanna Grabski, is already making great strides toward a world in which museums and the artists in them reflect who we are as a country and world. This program represents a prototype for a new kind of arts education and this partnership helps propel us toward our goal of projecting all voices through arts and culture.”

Students will contribute to investigating how museums can be more equitable and include an increasingly diverse range of voices and experiences. LACMA staff, in association with ASU faculty, will offer a new course on curatorial and museum practice in the 21st century.

“We believe museums are positioned to address some of the most pressing global challenges of our time,” said ASU Art Museum Director Miki Garcia. “ASU Art Museum embraces an experimental approach, testing cutting-edge ideas in the museum field to reinvent the paradigm. The fellows will be an integral part of re-thinking how museums of the future can become spaces that best reflect the full diversity of the communities they serve.”

The agreement, which was featured in The New York Times, calls for a five-year commitment. The initial cohort will start in August and is slated to include staff from both the ASU Art Museum and LACMA.

Tepper called the agreement “the beginning of an important partnership that we hope will grow to include significant exchange between LACMA and the ASU Art Museum, collaborative research projects, and mutual efforts to scale, at a global level, access to art history education and to the collections and exhibitions of our museums.”

Film Spark

ASU initiative connects students to film industry in Los Angeles

 

FILM SPARK HAS CONNECTED ASU students with Oscar winners and nominees, studio chiefs, blockbuster producers and award-winning directors. This innovative program at the intersection of the entertainment industry and academia accelerates the careers of ASU students and alumni, engages and grows the network of Hollywood Sun Devils and works to improve the entertainment industry. Through its feature film accelerator, Film Spark puts students to work on a professional film set. Open Netflix, iTunes and Amazon to see the work of 85 students and 15 alumni who had internships on the set of “Car Dogs,” a film directed by Film Spark Director and film faculty Adam Collis and featuring Patrick J. Adams, George Lopez, Nia Vardalos and Oscar winner Octavia Spencer.

Other films made using this teaching hospital model include “Postmarked,” directed by film lecturer Gene Ganssle with support from ASU, and “Justice Served.”

Film Spark also offers courses, workshops, film screenings with guest speakers and more at its headquarters at the ASU California Center in Santa Monica and at ASU in Tempe.

In 2017-18, Film Spark held its first L.A. Internship + Job Fair in California, with more than 100 students and alumni meeting industry insiders and connecting with top entertainment companies including CBS Corporation and Paradigm Talent Agency. Students learned about every step of making a movie, from production to casting to distribution, through a case study of the film “Wonder” and through a partnership with Lionsgate that included participation from ASU alumnus Michael Burns, vice-chairman of Lionsgate, and Erik Feig, co-president of Lionsgate. In the spring, AMC theatres in Santa Monica and in Tempe hosted simultaneous screenings of the Marvel movie mega hit “Black Panther,” followed by a Q&A with the movie’s executive producer Nate Moore. The event kicked off a collaboration between Film Spark and Film2Future, a Los Angeles-based nonprofit dedicated to educating underserved youth in the film and creative industries.