Mason Gross School of the Arts

Mason Gross School of the Arts is the arts conservatory at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey. It is named for Mason W. Gross, the sixteenth president of Rutgers. Mason Gross offers the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance, Theater and Visual Arts, Bachelor of Music, Master of Fine Arts in Theater and Visual Arts, Master of Education in Dance, Master of Music, Doctor of Musical Arts, Artist Diploma in Music, and MA and Ph.D. in composition, theory, and musicology.

Mason Gross was founded in 1976 as a school of the fine and performing arts within Rutgers and in 1976 became a separate degree-granting institution from the other Undergraduate colleges.

All fine arts departments at the other Rutgers colleges were merged into Mason Gross in 1981 and as of 2005 has expanded to more than 20 buildings, including the spacious visual arts studios at the Livingston campus and the Civic Square Building in the center of New Brunswick and a variety of performing-arts spaces. The buildings are all situated within Rutgers' Douglass College campus with the exception of the Civic Square Building (on Livingston Avenue) and the sculpture facilities (on the Livingston campus). The school is set to break ground on the Robert E. Mortensen Hall in December 2011. Mortensen Hall will house, among other things, a recital hall for dance and music, a choral rehearsal hall, practice suites, faculty offices and a technology studio for sound recording and engineering.

The Blanche and Irving Laurie Music Library houses approximately 15,000 recordings and 30,000 monographs and scores, serving as a research and reference library at all levels.

On average, the school accepts only 19.8% of its applicants per year, making it the most competitive school at Rutgers-New Brunswick for first-year undergraduates.

Notable alumni and faculty

• Emma Amos (painter)
• Andrea Anders (actress, "Mr. Sunshine," "Joey")
• Alice Aycock (sculptor)
• Roger Bart (Tony-Winning actor, "You're A Good Man Charlie Brown," "The Producers," "Desperate Housewives")
• Bill Bowers (mime artist and actor)
• Avery Brooks (actor, jazz and opera singer, "Star Trek: Deep Space Nine")
• Kevin Chamberlin (Tony-nominated actor, "The Addams Family")
• Michael Esper (actor, "American Idiot")
• Paul Cohen (classical-contemporary saxophonist/saxophone historian)
• Kristin Davis (Emmy-nominated actress, "Sex and the City")
• Cristina Pato (musician with Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble)
• Mike Dawson (cartoonist)
• Tim DeKay (actor, "White Collar," "Carnivale," "Tell Me You Love Me")
• Cheryl Dunye (film director, producer, screenwriter, editor and actress)
• Calista Flockhart (Golden Globe-winning actress, "Ally McBeal," "The Birdcage")
• Tina Gharavi (filmmaker and screenwriter)
• Derrick Gardner (jazz trumpeter)
• Israel Hicks (1943-2010), stage director who presented August Wilson's entire 10-play Pittsburgh Cycle.^[1]
• Aaron Jackson (design producer, "Extreme Makeover: Home Edition")
• Sean Jones (former lead trumpet in the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra)
• Michael Klein (television producer)
• Roy Lichtenstein (pop artist)
• Raphael Montañez Ortíz (performance artist)
• Adam Mucci (actor, "Boardwalk Empire")
• Matt Mulhern (actor)
• Tom Nozkowski (painter)
• Nell Painter (artist, historian, author, "The History of White People")
• Tom Pelphrey (Emmy-winning actor, "Guiding Light," "As The World Turns")
• Michael Powell (musician), trombonist in the American Brass Quintet
• Philipe D. Preston (actor)
• Molly Price (actress, "Third Watch")
• Matt Rainey (Pulitzer Prize-winning photojournalist)
• Sheryl Lee Ralph (actress, singer, "Dreamgirls," "Moesha")
• Charles Ray (artist)
• Harry Romero (DJ and record producer known as Harry Choo Choo Romero)
• Martha Rosler (artist)
• Rob Jess Roth (Tony-nominated director, Broadway's "Beauty and the Beast")
• Rob Ruggiero (Broadway director)
• George Segal (artist) (painter and sculptor)
• Dave Sirulnick (MTV executive)
• Joan Snyder (artist)
• Keith Sonnier (minimalist, performance, video and light artist)
• Terell Stafford (jazz trumpeter)
• Aaron Stanford (actor)*Arnold Steinhardt (first violinist, Guarneri Quartet)
• Sebastian Stan (actor, "Captain America: The First Avenger")
• Terrell Tilford (actor)
• Qiang Tu (cellist, New York Philharmonic)
• James Tupper (actor, "Men In Trees," "Grey's Anatomy")
• Stephen Westfall (painter)
• Wade Williams (actor)
• Xin Zhao (first violin, New Jersey Symphony Orchestra)
• John Yau (poet)

References

See also

• List of university and college schools of music

Related links

• Mason Gross School of the Arts official website
• MGSA Sculpture
• Art Portal
• Rutgers University

This article on a northeastern United States institution of higher education is a stub. You can help Wikipedia by expanding it.v · d · e

Coordinates: 40°29′34″N 74°26′42″W / 40.49276°N 74.44488°W / 40.49276; -74.44488