A Semester to Remember: Fall 2024 at CFA
From a University-wide vision for making the arts front and center across BU to revivals of musicals and operas, CFA’s Fall 2024 was a season of artistic brilliance.
A Semester to Remember: Fall 2024 at CFA
From a University-wide vision for making the arts front and center across BU to revivals of musicals and operas, CFA’s Fall 2024 was a season of artistic brilliance.
Before Boston University’s Spring 2025 semester officially kicks off, join us as we revisit the highlights of Fall 2024 at BU College of Fine Arts. From awe-inspiring performances and revivals of musicals and operas to traveling across the Atlantic and representing BU on the global stage, the CFA community has once again shown its commitment to artistic and academic excellence. Here’s a look back at the events, exhibitions, performances, and milestones that made this semester an unforgettable… and historical one!
A new president with the arts close to heart
For BU’s 11th president, elevating the presence of the arts on campus is one of Dr. Melissa L. Gilliam’s main goals.
A new era began at Boston University in 2024 with Dr. Melissa L. Gilliam assuming the role of BU’s 11th president. Dr. Gilliam has described an “ambitious vision” to put the arts “front and center across our campuses.” With a medical and research-focused background, Dr. Gilliam has always been surrounded by the arts. Gilliam’s late father was a renowned abstract painter and her mother, a groundbreaking journalist.
“My own dear father, Sam Gilliam, who was born in Tupelo, Mississippi, in 1933, was inspired by the improvisation of jazz music, the most original of American musical forms,” Gilliam said, “and he transformed painting into sculpture by draping canvases from ceiling to floor and along the outside of buildings, now gracing museums around the world. At times when the logic, beauty, and grace of science fail to convince minds, I can think of nothing more salient, more penetrating, more perfect than art.”
At times when the logic, beauty, and grace of science fail to convince minds, I can think of nothing more salient, more penetrating, more perfect than art.
During President Gilliam’s inaugural address, she announced the naming of CFA Dean Harvey Young to lead a President’s Advisory Council on the Arts. Later in the fall, President Gilliam launched the initiative “Boston University Arts.” The initiative will build on the strong arts foundation found at BU by establishing a University-wide vision for making the arts front and center across our campuses, while also ensuring that BU is a leader in and a destination for the arts.
Chills and thrills at BU’s annual Fringe Festival…
The festival’s 28th season brought two operas and a drama to BU
Horror, heartbreak, and daring escape plans were featured in BU’s 2024 Fringe Festival repertoire. A collaboration between BU’s Opera Institute and School of Theatre, Fringe Festival takes its name from the world-renowned Edinburgh Fringe Festival, which since 1947 has been a leading showcase for theater, comedy, dance, circus, cabaret, opera, and more. BU’s festival focuses on opera and theater.
The festival’s 28th season, which took place throughout October, brought us two operas—Dark Sisters, by Nico Muhly (BUTI’96,’97), and Siren Song by Jonathan Dove—and a drama, Entry (or, you think you know me) by S. Thomasin Barsotti.
Dark Sisters. Photo by Russel Laman
Dark Sisters. Photo by Russel Laman
Dark Sisters. Photo by Russel Laman
Dark Sisters, featuring music by Muhly and a libretto by Tony Award–winning playwright Stephen Karam, follows a woman attempting to escape the Fundamentalist Latter Day Saints (FLDS) Church, a sect that broke off from mainstream Mormonism in the early 20th century. Many of the opera’s most theatrical (and shocking) moments—state officials removing children from the fundamentalist compound, a mantra-like command to “keep sweet,” and the sister wives’ bizarre television appearance—were inspired by real-life events.
Siren Song. Photo by Jacob Chang-Rascle
Siren Song. Photo by Jacob Chang-Rascle
Siren Song. Photo by Jacob Chang-Rascle
Siren Song, like Dark Sisters, is also based on a bizarre true story. A lonely sailor stationed aboard the HMS Ark Royal starts writing letters to a beautiful model called Diana. But things are not as they seem, and the sailor never seems able to make physical contact with her. Siren Song took the audience far beyond a typical romance story into a world of voyage and mirage.
Entry (or, you think you know me). Photo by Katie Nelson
Entry (or, you think you know me). Photo by Katie Nelson
Entry (or, you think you know me). Photo by Katie Nelson
And, Entry (or, you think you know me), is a horror piece following a couple on a seemingly benign vacation that soon turns sinister. The play’s director Taylor Stark (CFA’25) mentioned how the show managed to pack in complex themes such as grief, love, and memories, while covering a number of different horror genres. Regarding Fringe, Stark sees the festival as “a time to deliberately stage things that are a little bit new and fresh and unknown.”
INNOVATION TAKES THE STAGE AT 28TH ANNUAL CFA FRINGE FESTIVAL
Dynamic exhibitions, celebrating the work of alums, visionary artists, and BU’s very own photojournalists
There’s an exhibition for everyone at BU Art Galleries.
Boston University Art Galleries’ fall season began at the Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery with the exhibition, 1998, a selection of photographs by artist Laurie Simmons that revisited the miniature elements Simmons introduced in her seminal work of the late 1970s. The title, playfully inspired by Taylor Swift’s 1989 album, references work produced by Simmons in the year 1998 for an exhibition at the Metropolitan Museum of Art called Metro Pictures. Simmons is an American artist, photographer and filmmaker. Since the mid-1970s, Simmons has staged scenes for her camera with dolls, ventriloquist dummies, objects on legs, and people, to create photographs that reference domestic scenes.
1998. Photo by Mel Taing
1998. Photo by Mel Taing
The exhibition captured the attention of the Boston community, including The Boston Globe, which ran a feature on Simmons’ exhibition. “There are only 22 photographs in ‘1998: Works by Laurie Simmons,’ but the show feels much larger than that,” writes Mark Feeney for the Globe.
Across Stone Gallery, at 808 Gallery, over 50 BU School of Visual Arts alums from the MFA Painting and Sculpture Classes of 1969 – 2024 exhibited their works. Group Crit: MFA Painting and Sculpture 1969 – 2024 was a cross-generational discourse on form and ideas. The work, at times, agreed with each other and, at other times, agreed to disagree. Group Crit, celebrated these varied perspectives and created a space for them to be appreciated together.
Later in the semester, BU’s very own photojournalists were celebrated and recognized in the 808 Gallery exhibition, Moments in Photography. For nearly a decade, BU photographers Cydney Scott, Janice Checchio, and Jackie Ricciardi have been recording daily life on the University’s campuses, attending hundreds of events and taking hundreds more portraits of students, faculty, and staff for stories that appear in the University’s publications.
Inspired by “surrealism, mythology, and nature” is Checcio (CFA’07) associate creative director of photography at BU Marketing & Communications. The exhibition included photos from a yearlong self-portrait project, and its dreamlike composition, cinematic lighting, touch of eccentric humor carries over into her BU work.
Scott’s work offers an arresting depiction of human emotions, captured with the same intimacy in crowd settings and private moments. Scott says she was inspired by the work of Alfred Eisenstaedt, the hugely influential mid-20th century Life magazine photographer known for his depiction of everyday Americans.
Ricciardi applies a unique process to her craft, using a meditative, contemplative approach that stresses long-term observation and patience. Some of her work in the show is taken from her long-form Rite of Passage series, where she followed entering freshmen as they prepared for the beginning of their journey to BU.
Photo by Jacob Chang-Rascle (COM’22)
Photo by Robert Bredvad
Photo by Jacob Chang-Rascle (COM’22)
BU Art Galleries made history with the exhibition, CEY ADAMS, DEPARTURE: 40 Years of Art and Design, a retrospective exhibition of Cey Adams’ illustrious forty-year career as a visionary artist, cultural pioneer, and innovative designer.
Featuring more than 60 pieces that encompass his work through photography archives, mixed media collage, paintings, textile, fashion, street art, contemporary fine art and more, the exhibition, curated by Liza Quiñonez of Street Theory, is a visual timeline of the artistic evolution of Adams and a body of work influenced by themes of pop culture, race and gender relations, cultural and community issues.
This exhibition was one of many firsts. This was the first solo exhibition to be hosted in Stone Gallery (Fall 2022), the first solo retrospective exhibition for Adams, and the first traveling show for BU Art Galleries.
The best thing about a traveling show is that it can adapt to each venue it travels to, making the show its own footprint. The show is a mix of all kinds of mediums – painting, graffiti murals, photography, and examples of collaborations Adams has done with brands like Levi’s, Supreme, and Mattel. Each exhibition has added pieces and switched things up a bit.
The exhibition has traveled to University of North Texas in Denton, TX; Yes we are MAD in Dania Beach, FL; Drexel University in Philadelphia, PA; and is currently on view at The Museum of Graffiti in Miami, FL.
Revival of classics and masterpieces
Broadway’s original roller skating musical and a long-lost Cuban opera made its way to BU
BU made theatre and opera history this fall. BU School of Theatre presented The Rink, Broadway’s original roller skating musical, at BU’s Joan & Edgar Booth Theatre from November 22 through December 8. For the first time in 40 years, The Rink, a rarely produced musical written by Terrence McNally, with music and lyrics by John Kander and Fred Ebb, featured a newly restored book and orchestrations.
One of Broadway’s most successful songwriting teams, Kander and Ebb are best known for writing the music and lyrics to the Broadway hits Cabaret and Chicago. The Rink first opened on Broadway in 1984, starring legendary actors Chita Rivera and Liza Minnelli.
Photo by Jake Belcher
Photo by Jake Belcher
Italian housewife Anna Antonelli’s roller rink is about to be demolished, and with it Anna’s sour memories of her Lothario of a husband and her painfully shy and estranged daughter Angel. Angel returns after a long absence, hoping to save the rink and rekindle the relationship with her mother. The rink becomes an arena in which mother and daughter examine their past, present and future.
The stage of Booth Theatre was transformed into a forlorn roller skating rink (located in a sort of Coney Island of the mind), with large light-up signs surrounding the wood floor, a dilapidated pay phone standing to the side, and a glittering disco ball and string lights hanging overhead.
Photo by Tracy Nguyen
Photo by Tracy Nguyen
Photo by Tracy Nguyen
For BU students acting in SOT’s production of The Rink, reviving a classic soundtrack presented a particularly exciting opportunity. “Especially as an acting major, it’s not super common to get to do super Broadway-esque musical shows” said Ava Cronin (CFA’26), who plays Anna. “Getting to experience that this year has been the greatest gift… This role is truly everything I could dream it to be.”
see behind-the-scenes footage and some roller skating action
And in the world of BU Opera Institute, Cuban composer Eduardo Sánchez de Fuentes’ opera El Caminante, rediscovered after more than a century, had its world (re)premiere at Boston University.
David Guzmán, assistant professor of music, voice at BU School of Music, uncovered the piano-vocal score in Harvard University’s archives in 2020. Guzmán found the orchestral score in Cuba three years later.
El Caminante tells the story of a girl, Yolanda, and her mother, Ginesa, both devout Catholics. Yolanda has lost the ability to walk, and now her mother spends her days searching for help for her daughter’s condition. All the while, Yolanda dreams of a mysterious stranger coming to heal her. Mother and daughter pray to Jesus for a miracle—and one is sent to them in the form of a caminante, who comes to them seeking water for his journey.
With a concert-style performance brought to life by a trio of CFA faculty from the BU Opera Institute, the historical event featured BU’s Symphony Orchestra, conducted by William Lumpkin, Associate Professor of Music; Artistic Director, Opera Institute. Guzmán sang the titular tenor role, with CFA alum and opera star Michelle Johnson (CFA’07) as Yolanda (lead soprano) and performance diploma student Juliette Kaoudji (CFA’26) as Ginesa (mezzo-soprano). Opera Institute students sang the ensemble parts.
The live opera recording of El Caminante at BU’s Tsai Performance Center is to be released on PARMA’s GRAMMY®-winning Navona Records label.
On the global stage
BU Pep Band in Belfast for Friendship Four; BU talent on display in Venice alongside Venice Biennale
Every year, Venice, Italy, lights up with artists and luminaries at the Venice Biennale, the world’s oldest arts and architecture festival, and also one of the world’s most respected celebrations of creative genius. Outside the massive art exhibition within the Giardini della Biennale, dozens of galleries and pop-up shows host art events of their own, turning the entire city into one sprawling moveable feast.
Among the local exhibitors was A Plus A Gallery—a 1.5-mile boat trip from the Giardini. During the Biennale, A Plus A Gallery presented two concurrent exhibitions, each offering the international audience a chance to view art by members of BU’s visual arts community.
The first of the two shows, Hidden in the Layers, was an exhibition celebrating Charles Suggs (CFA’20) and CFA faculty members Joshua Brennan, lecturer in printmaking and technical associate in printmaking and photography; Lynne Allen, professor of art and chair of the program; Deborah Cornell, professor of art and head of printmaking; and Toni Pepe, assistant professor of art and head of photography.
“Each artist has a wildly varying practice from the next: Josh and Deborah lean towards abstraction while Charles, Toni, and Lynne use figural imagery,” explained Stacy McKenna (MET’21), CFA associate director for strategic initiatives and co-curator of the show. “The common thread that ties them all together is in the layers—both metaphorically and literally. Each work carries layers of meaning, thought, and critique, and the prints and photographs consist of print and paint layers.”
The second exhibition, Atlantic Exchange, was a selection of more than 20 works across artistic disciplines, created by 14 CFA students and participants in the University’s Study Abroad Venice Studio Arts program. “The [Venice study abroad] program provides undergraduate art and design students the exceptional opportunity to develop their practices in a city where art, art history, and history are ubiquitously manifest,” said a statement by Marc Schepens (CFA’12), School of Visual Arts director, a senior lecturer in art, and a painter.
This past Thanksgiving looked a bit different for BU’s men’s hockey team and the BU Pep Band, who brought their energy and tradition of American college sports to Belfast, Northern Ireland to compete in the Friendship Four – the only NCAA Division I ice hockey tournament held outside North America.
Founded in 2015, the Friendship Four celebrates the official sister-city relationship between Boston and Belfast, blending elite hockey with cultural and community engagement. BU joined Merrimack College, Harvard University, and Notre Dame in the four-team competition.
The BU Pep Band, within BU Bands, made history of its own, traveling overseas with the hockey team for the first time and bringing the music and spirit that define BU hockey games. Based on auditions and availability, 40 band members were selected to accompany the hockey team to Ireland. Funding for the trip was supported through BU Athletics, BU School of Music, and a successful Terriers Together fundraiser.
The BU Pep Band made Belfast feel like Agganis Arena, showing both the tradition of BU hockey and the pop and rock tunes that get the fans moving. The trip brought lasting memories to the hockey and band members and to top it off, the BU Men’s Hockey won the Friendship Four!
Community and Connection at CFA
Celebrating alums, engaging with our community, and creating memories for all
At CFA, community and connection are at the heart of everything we do. Together, we celebrate the power of artistic expression to inspire, connect, and shape the world. Let’s go through some additional highlights of the fall, including recognizing the very best of BU and welcoming guest artists to Terrier Town.
2024 BU Distinguished Alumni Awards
In September, as part of 2024 Alumni Weekend festivities, the BU Alumni Association presented its highest honor to five outstanding individuals, among them two CFA alums: Emmy-winning and Tony-nominated actor Uzo Aduba (CFA’05) and lauded actor and activist Michelle Hurd (CFA’88).
In conversation with Adrienne Elise Tarver (CFA’07)
CFA hosted a special event with interdisciplinary artist Adrienne Elise Tarver (CFA’07) about Tarver’s 2024 Public Art Fund exhibition, She Who Sits, which features a series of paintings foregrounding multifaceted Black female identities displayed on hundreds of bus shelters and newsstands in select cities.
The Spongebob Musical at Wheelock Family Theatre
Wheelock Family Theatre was transformed into Bikini Bottom with The Spongebob Musical, an exuberant adaptation of the TV series. In the show, SpongeBob and his best friends—starfish Patrick Star and squirrel and brilliant scientist Sandy Cheeks—must save Bikini Bottom from an imminent underwater volcano.
Nina Tassler (CFA’79, Hon.’16) rejoins BU Board of Trustees
Nina Tassler (CFA’79, Hon.’16), producer, author, and media and entertainment executive, rejoined the BU Board of Trustees this fall. Tassler is the former chairman of CBS Entertainment, responsible for hit series including The Big Bang Theory, How I Met Your Mother, Criminal Minds, and The Good Wife. Tassler served as a trustee from 2009 through 2023 before rejoining.
BU Arts Initiative artist residency with Jacob Webster
Recognized on the Forbes Under 30 list for 2024, self-taught freelance photographer and creative director, Jacob Webster, specializes in beauty and fashion photography with over a decade of experience. At BU, Webster offered insights and advice to fellow creatives through workshops and has an exhibition, with a selection of his works, on view through January 21st at BU Arts Initiative.
BU Alumni Association hosts BU on Broadway
The BU Alumni Association and NYC Entertainment Alumni Network hosted an unforgettable evening for BU alums: BU on Broadway. Alums reconnected with fellow Terriers and experienced a Broadway musical together at the newly-renovated and stunning Palace Theatre—co-owned by BU alum and Tony-winning producer Stewart F. Lane (CFA’73).
New England’s leading event for comics returned to BU
The Massachusetts Independent Comics Expo (MICE) returned to BU for its third consecutive year. The three-day event was jam-packed with incredible panels, hands-on workshops, and a vibrant expo where 200+ creators showcased their work. The 2024 keynote was Deena Mohamed, an Egyptian comics artist and writer celebrated for her webcomic Qahera, which features a visibly Muslim Egyptian superhero.
Holiday magic at Wheelock Family Theatre with A Year with Frog and Toad
A Year with Frog and Toad follows Frog and Toad through four seasons, going on adventures, all while learning important life lessons. Veteran stage actor Will McGarrahan starred as Toad and Anthony Pires, Jr., played Frog. Chelsea Kerl (CFA’14), who has designed costumes for nearly every theater company in Boston, was the production’s costume designer.
BU Trumpet Ensemble lit up the stage at GBH Music Holiday Spectacular
The BU Trumpet Ensemble, led by Professor Terry Everson, performed at the GBH Music Holiday Spectacular! This festive event brought together some of Boston’s finest musicians, and BU School of Music students were thrilled to share their passion for music with the Boston community. The program included a mix of holiday classics and inventive arrangements.
Before we head into spring 2025…
Enjoy a virtual tour of CFA! You’ll be soaring across Commonwealth Ave and through our classrooms, hallways, galleries, and performance spaces where the creativity of our students comes to life!