Editor’s Note

By Jackie Donohoe, The Dartmouth Senior Staff

Published on Thursday, October 11, 2012

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Over the summer, Interim College President Carol Folt announced the Year of the Arts initiative, a project that coincides with the dedication of the College’s new Arts District, with the opening of the Black Family Visual Arts Center and with the 50th anniversary of the Hopkins Center. The 2012-2013 school year will spotlight the arts at Dartmouth by bringing notable alumni, artists and exhibitions to campus, and this weekend marks the official 50th Anniversary Celebration Weekend. To preview the events of the big weekend, we talked with a number of notable visiting artists, alumni, faculty and students.

To kick off the festivities, the Hopkins Center will premiere projection artist Ross Ashton’s “Five Windows,” which will illuminate the facade of the Hopkins Center in preparation for the multitude of performances and concerts that the building will host this weekend. Notable visitors including actor John Lithgow, famed filmmaker Buck Henry ’52 and comedian Rachel Dratch ’88 will join the Dartmouth community to celebrate the arts this weekend.

Now in its 50th year, when the Hopkins Center opened in 1962, it was the culmination of an over 40-year project promised by then-College President Ernest Martin Hopkins to Warner Bentley of the English department, delayed in completion by World War II and Hopkins’ retirement. Now, in the 21st century, the Hopkins Center embodies the epicenter of the arts at Dartmouth, which formerly did not have a true home on campus before the building’s construction. In celebration of its anniversary, the Year of the Arts spotlights the now vibrant, thriving art culture at the College. The arts have increasingly become a greater part of Dartmouth culture over the last half century, signified by the continued devotion and prominence of student, alumni and faculty members.