College of the Arts Events

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From weekly rotating art exhibitions showcased in more than seven gallery spaces dedicated to student work to world class performers appearing on the Carpenter Performing Arts Center stage, from innovative and informative lectures, screenings, and artist talks to classic and contemporary music, dance, and theatre performances - arts lovers and supporters can find something for every taste and sensibility within the wide variety of offerings in any given week during the academic year.

Explore our events by genre or venue below or scroll down past the links to find the events coming up this month.

Visual Art and Design Events

Dance, Film, and Theatre Events

Music Events

Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum Events

Carpenter Performing Arts Center Events

September/October 2023

Drag Show 
Through December 15 
Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum, Main Gallery 
Drag Show narrates a history of 1980s and 1990s LGBT counter cultural experience.  A form that puts critique and resistance at the center of its practice, drag is a type of performance art with deep connections to other art forms and related cultural practices. In this context, difference is celebrated as a foundation for building and living within community.  This exhibition reflects upon a rich moment in our cultural history and explores how drag was and continues to be a powerful and pointedly political act that fosters resilience. 

Nery Gabriel Lemus 
Through December 15 
Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum, Mini Gallery
Nery Gabriel Lemus is a multidisciplinary artist born and raised in Los Angeles, CA. The Museum presents the artist’s 2016 installation sculpture, A Memorial to Three Unknown Females, which memorializes three women who died along the U.S-Mexico border. The work is inspired by sawdust carpets used most traditionally in religious processions throughout Central America. Using this historical form and the influence of the installation work of Carl Andre, Lemus created a contemporary carpet made from Ikea coir mats; in doing so he activates the act of remembering through historic cultural legacies. 

Pau Pescador 
Through December 15 
Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum, Main Gallery Corridor
The Museum presents photographic collages of Pau Pescador centered on the artist themself as the subject in what may be their most personal body of images yet. The artist deconstructs the process of shifting their own physical appearance as a trans non-binary individual in images that are simultaneously documentation and abstraction, dancing with cultural signifiers of identity constructs. Pescador is a contemporary trans-nonbinary artist who works in film, photography, and performance. They graduated with an MFA from University of California, Irvine and a BA from University of Southern California.  

Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld: On Top of a Mountain 
Through December 2023 
Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum
Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld works from her Northern California home and has welcomed friends, creatives, and thought leaders there for decades. In her journals, she describes her studio as sited “on top of a mountain”, which has inspired this selection of works. Her way of living is organized around sustained engagement with nature, love, solitude, writing and visual art making, and a rejection of market values and consumerism. Always inspired by her life, the drawings on view are part of a large gift of art given by the artist to the Museum. 

Tuesday Talks 
Ongoing
Every Tuesday beginning September 19 from noon–1pm
Carolyn Campagna Kleefeld Contemporary Art Museum
Gallery talks led by artists, curators, and educators focusing on individual works on view or single topics.