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At Boston University College of Fine Arts we make art and impact. Narrow your focus and broaden the scope of your thinking. We are musicians and actors.

Boston University College of Fine Arts is more than a community of artists—it is a specialized educational experience that demands inquiry and exploration, individuality and teamwork, and academic and artistic immersion. This is a place where students and faculty can fully explore and expand the study of music, theatre, and visual arts in the context of an elite research university. BU College of Fine Arts encourages an environment of diverse interests and individual thinking. This is where you can participate in academic exercises that will stretch your abilities. Art is neither created nor experienced in isolation. Art is informed by the world in which we live. This is where your expression can be a powerful catalyst in political, cultural, environmental, and social discourse. This is where you will master the rigors of your craft, while challenging the status quo. Painters and composers. Costume designers and animators. Researchers and teachers. Activists and academics. Problem solvers and innovators. Achievers and leaders. If you are ready to dedicate yourself to your craft, commit yourself to exploration and experimentation, and reach for excellence in your art and academics, then this is your place. This is your community of artists. This is BU College of Fine Arts.

10/30/2026

ATTEND: CFA-ers, join us next Friday, November 6, for an arepa and empanada lunch to celebrate first-generation students! ❤️ 🐾 Resources from the Boston University Newbury Center will be available at the event, and all CFA students, regardless of first-gen status, are welcome to participate.

📅 Friday, November 6
🕐 12:30 - 2pm
📍 CFA Student Lounge, 855 Commonwealth Ave

10/30/2026

THE SUM OF THEIR PARTS: Cathy Della Lucia’s fantastical mixed-media sculptures tell complicated stories. ✨ At her 📍Boston studio, Della Lucia (CFA’17) mixes wood with ceramic, plastic, and metal to create intricate modular sculptures that can resemble artisanal building toys or abstract medical models. Each piece of a Della Lucia sculpture is clearly differentiated from the next by color and textures. They’re joined using a range of techniques, including pegs, joints, and magnets. 🛠️ 🚧

“I’m hoping you’ll ask, ‘Is it plastic? Is that ceramic?’ I think it brings you in closer,” says Della Lucia, who was one of the exhibiting artists in Boston University Art Galleries' 2025 exhibition, "Constituent Parts." “It makes you really think about the importance of the material. If you think it’s plastic, does that change the value of it?”

Featured in the latest issue of CFA magazine, Della Lucia, born in Korea and adopted by a family in the United States, traces her interest in disguising one material as another to “a lot of confusion about my identity—what it meant to be Asian while thinking I was white.”

But not all of the references in her work are so personal. Gambling, sports, fishing, stock markets, inexpensive IKEA furniture, toys, and weapons have all been sources of inspiration. See what else inspires Della Lucia in CFA magazine 📖 ➡️ http://spr.ly/6183BHUeiD

10/28/2026

EXTRA, EXTRA: In an age when physical news sources have largely been replaced by their online counterparts and social media, Susan Bright mourns the loss of the tactile, sensory experience of flipping through the paper's pages—and the memories she formed around it. Smelling a printed newspaper and enjoying a Sunday morning with family reading the paper. ☀️ 📰

That sensation, that something is missing or disappearing, is what led Bright to curate the exhibition, "Between the Bylines," on view at Boston University’s Faye G., Jo, and James Stone Gallery through December 10.

The fourteen artists featured in Between the Bylines obscure, redact, manipulate, and fracture physical news media, encouraging the audience to think about issues of subjectivity and control in the press. According to Bright, it’s not just a look back at the historic value and failings of the media but a way of interpreting the current “crisis of information.”

“There’s been sensationalism and lies in the paper for as long as there have been papers,” Bright says. “It’s just accelerated and sped up now. Between the Bylines is actually thinking about where we are now and how we understand [information] now… It’s there to remind us."

Read more about the exhibition in BU Today 🗞️ ➡️ http://spr.ly/6188BHlvAE

📸 Mel Tiang

10/27/2026

MEET: Shrutant Ramaswamy (CFA’27), an undergraduate student pursuing a BFA in Acting and a minor in Film/TV at Boston University. Originally from Mumbai, India, Shrutant chose BU not only for its striking demographic of international students, the emphasis on academics, and the city campus layout, but also because his mentor and his first acting teacher is a BU alum. ❤️🐾

Describing CFA as “bold,” Shrutant says his experiences at BU have been necessary to his growth as an artist and as an individual. Whether it be in the rehearsal rooms, on student film sets, or in collaborative projects with his best friends and colleagues, such as works through New Works or a self-produced show, Shrutant cherishes all of it. A particularly transformative opportunity Shrutant had was his time abroad at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art this past spring. “Practicing my fencing and doing Shakespeare with my friends are two memories I’ll always hold dear to me.” 🎭

Read more about Shrutant, who will be acting in Theat(re) by Durang, directed by CFA’s Jim Fagan III. Catch it before this Thanksgiving ➡️ https://www.instagram.com/p/DfATrwslzvR/?img_index=1

10/26/2026

A VISION COME TO LIFE: Giacomo Puccini, one of the most successful and influential Italian composers, left behind a legendary body of work, from La bohéme to Madama Butterfly. Many of his works are still the most frequently performed in the modern canon. 🇮🇹 🎼

One opera, however, remained unfinished before his passing. Enter Turandot. One hundred years after Turandot first debuted, Deborah Burton, a Boston University School of Music associate professor of music, has given the unfinished opera an ending closer to what Puccini originally envisioned. Working with German musicologist Dieter Schickling, Burton tracked down and accessed Puccini's original notes, making her the first musicologist to study many of these compositional notes. ✍️

After an initial run-through of the opera at Boston University, conducted by Martin Amlin, Mildred P. Gilfillan Professor of Music and associate director of the BU Center for New Music, Burton secured a world premiere in July at the Teatro della Pergola, a historic opera house in Florence, Italy, that had played host to the composer’s work when he was in his prime.

Read more about Burton's process on giving Puccini's last opera a true ending in The Brink ➡️ http://spr.ly/6185BH9koz

10/26/2026

SPOOKY SEASON: CFA students... enjoy food, music, games, pumpkin decorating, and customize your own crystal manifestation jars at this year’s CFA Halloween celebration! 🎃👻🕸️

📅 Wednesday, October 28
📍CFA Student Lounge, 855 Comm. Ave
🕐 12 - 2pm

10/23/2026

WATCH: Get to know Lynne Allen, back for a second time as CFA Interim Dean! 🙌

A professor of art in printmaking at BU School of Visual Arts, a 2025 Guggenheim Fellow, and a two-time Fulbright scholar, Lynne has made a transformative impact at Boston University for 20+ years. Teaching, leading, mentoring, creating, and connecting around the globe. 🌎 Her favorite city? Watch to the end. 🎥

Welcome back, Dean Allen! ❤️ Read more on Dean Allen's appointment ➡️ http://spr.ly/6180BHbrzQ

10/22/2026

CONVERSATION: Much of the glamour and allure of the Golden Age of Hollywood was the result of costume designers who designed ✨iconic✨ pieces. 📽️ Think Marlene Dietrich’s androgynous tuxedo and Marilyn Monroe’s billowing white halter dress. Many of those costume designers—people like Gilbert Adrian, Edith Head, Irene Sharaff, and Orry-Kelly—were nearly as famous as the stars they dressed.

Today, fashion historians and Boston University alums Coleen Scott (CFA’04) and Raissa Bretaña (CFA’13) are working to keep the legacy of Hollywood’s costume designers alive. 👏

Scott, head of costume technology and makeup at Santa Rosa Junior College, and Bretaña, staff member at the Fashion Institute of Technology, met for the first time when CFA magazine brought them together to discuss how Boston University CFA School of Theatre helped them hone their craft and perspective and their favorite designers, stars, and outfits from Hollywood’s Golden Age. 🎭 ⭐

Read their conversation in the fall issue of CFA magazine 🍁🍂 ➡️ http://spr.ly/6185BHZUtR

10/21/2026

REIMAGINE: Over the past 10 years, Missy Mazzoli (CFA’02, Boston University Tanglewood Institute - BUTI’98) has risen to fame, sweeping waves of drama and disorientation, drawing on such unlikely sounds as kazoos and electronic four-on-the-floor dance beats. She writes politically urgent, musically eclectic works for a new generation of operagoers. 💃 🎼

“I don’t feel that opera has to stay stuck in the past," says Mazzoli. "I really want my work to spark a conversation among the audience, with the critics, with the press.” Her next opera, “Lincoln in the Bardo,” opened at The Metropolitan Opera this month, making it the first world-premiere opera the Met has presented written by a woman. 👏

Read more about the Grammy-nominated composer pushing opera into the future 🙌 ➡️ http://spr.ly/6184BHX1SK

10/20/2026

MEET: Erinn Grendahl (CFA’27), a graduate student studying costume design at Boston University! 🧵👗 Originally from Minneapolis, Minnesota, Erinn came to BU seeking the push to grow artistically and help her focus on her areas of interest. ❤️🐾

Describing CFA as “distinct,” Erinn says Boston University CFA School of Theatre places a big emphasis on collaboration. She has had many opportunities to collaborate with both undergraduate and graduate students while at BU. “I have been able to navigate different working styles and personalities among collaborators in varying disciplines, which has definitely changed my perspective and my approach toward the team sport that is theatre.” 🎭

Read more about Erinn, who is costume designing for the upcoming Booth Theatre musical, Violet! 💜 ➡️ http://spr.ly/6188BHpkKm

Address

855 Commonwealth Avenue
Boston, MA
02215

Website

http://www.bu.edu/cfa/

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