Meadows School of the Arts - Home
Meadows School of the Arts, founded through the generosity of Algur H. Meadows, his family and the Meadows Foundation, is recognized as one of the nation’s premier fine arts schools. In the SMU community, it offers intense specialized education in the performing arts, visual arts and communications and provides a rich variety of coursework for students from other disciplines exploring the arts as part of their liberal arts education.
In addition to working closely with a nationally renowned full-time faculty, Meadows students have access to eminent visiting professors artists and the winners of the Algur H. Meadows Award for Excellence in the Arts. Award recipients who have lectured or performed and presented Master's classes include film artist Ingmar Bergman; dancer and choreographer Martha Graham; dancer and choreographer Merce Cunningham; cellist and conductor Mstislav Rostropovich; actor, director and producer John Houseman; artist Robert Rauschenberg; playwright Arthur Miller; soprano Leontyne Price; director and author Peter Brook; composer-lyricist Stephen Sondheim; dancer and choreographer Paul Taylor; artist Jacob Lawrence; trumpeter, composer and educator Wynton Marsalis; architect, engineer and artist Santiago Calatrava; dancer and choreographer Judith Jamison; 60 Minutes executive producer Don Hewitt; and playwright Edward Albee.
Meadows also offers one of the finest university complexes in the nation for instruction, performance and exhibition in art, art history, arts administration, music, dance, cinema-television and theater.
Academic, Performance and Exhibition Spaces
The Owen Arts Center, home of Meadows School of the Arts, houses the Greer Garson Theatre
(a classical thrust-stage design), the Bob Hope Theatre (a proscenium design), the Margo Jones Theatre (a black-box theater), Caruth Auditorium, the Charles S. Sharp Performing Arts Studio, O’Donnell Lecture/Recital Hall, several other performance spaces, classrooms, studios and rehearsal areas. The Doolin Gallery in Owen Arts Center and the Pollock Gallery, housed in the Hughes-Trigg Student Center, are the exhibition spaces of the Division of Art. Student work is exhibited and critiqued in the Doolin. Exhibitions organized in the Pollock Gallery provide students, faculty, staff and the surrounding community with opportunities to experience a thoughtful and wide array of exhibitions representing diverse artists, time periods and cultures.
The Meadows Museum, located at the south end of Bishop Boulevard, exhibits one of the most comprehensive collections of Spanish art outside of Spain, including works of such masters as Velázquez, Ribera, Sorolla, Murillo, Goya, Picasso, Miró and El Greco. The Elizabeth Meadows Sculpture Collection contains important works by such modern sculptors as Rodin, Maillol, Lipschitz, Henry Moore, Marini, Giacometti, Noguchi, David Smith and Claes Oldenburg.
In the last decade, Meadows School of the Arts has realized considerable expansion in academic, performance and exhibition spaces. Umphrey Lee Center houses state-of-the-art facilities for television, including a fully equipped studio. The Jake and Nancy Hamon Arts Library was completed as an addition to the Owen Arts Center. This four-story addition houses all arts library collections, a slide library, an audio/visual center and the Center for Instructional Technologies in the Arts. During the library expansion, the O’Donnell Lecture/Recital Hall, the Rosalie and Herman Taubman Family Atrium, the Bonelli Commons, a percussion studio, a music education and therapy suite, an electronic music studio, and numerous new office spaces also were built. The Greer Garson
Theatre, completed in 1992, is a unique combination of historical stage design and a state-of-the-art technical theatrical environment. This addition to the Owen Arts Center also houses the Dean’s Suite and the G. William Jones Film and Video Collection, complete with two screening rooms and a 3,800-square-foot refrigerated storage vault. With the completion of these projects, Meadows School of the Arts occupies approximately a half-million square feet of space.
Share