Art Is All Around!

The Festival of the Creative Arts at Brandeis was founded in 1952 by the brilliant composer and conductor Leonard Bernstein. Each spring, the Brandeis campus blooms in a celebration of creativity and community, with work by national and regional artists as well as Brandeis faculty and students. All festival events are free and open to the public unless otherwise noted.

The Leonard Bernstein Festival of the Creative Arts is sponsored by the Brandeis Office of the Arts.

Art Activates Vision: Exhibitions


Sarah Zell Young: Occupy Sanhedrin

Kniznick Gallery at the Women’s Studies Research Center
Gallery hours: Thursday and Friday, 9:00 a.m. - 5:00 p.m., Sunday, noon - 4:00 p.m. 

Emerging multimedia artist Sarah Zell Young’s exhibition features photographs and a large, interactive, feminist rendition of a Sanhedrin (rabbinic court). Explore issues of justice, Judaism and the body. Also on view: Oil paintings of Berber women by Chama Mechtaly ’15.

Activate Alternate Realities
What is photography now? Is it an image made by adding light to darkness? Is it a moment suspended in time, capturing something real? Students in FA 9a-2, Introduction to Digital Photography, have blurred the lines between painting and photography, reality and virtual reality. View their online exhibition here. 

The Israel Projects

Usdan Student Center, Gluck Lobby (on view through April 27)

Hillel at Brandeis visiting artist Diana Gilon and Brandeis students have created a large mural on themes of Israel and coexistence.              

Prospect II
Spingold Theater Center, Dreitzer Gallery

Accomplished studio artists in the postbaccalaureate program exhibit painting, sculpture, drawing, and printmaking. Maya Anderson, Kelsey Elverum, Danielle Friedman, Ryan Gallant, Rachel Gelenius, Kathleen Klein, Susan Rosenfield, Matthew Samelowicz, On Kyeong Seong and Katherine Spencer.

Festival of the Creative Arts Projects
Each year, the festival sponsors innovative new artwork that offers the community opportunity to create, participate, and learn about the arts. Projects in the visual arts are displayed all around campus.

Outside the Rose Art Museum

  • Victoria Cheah Ph.D. ’16: Stroke. Sound installation inspired by Ellsworth Kelly’s “Blue White” on view at the Rose.
  • Robert Fitzgerald PB ’13: Trail to the Rose. Discover an artist’s interpretation of art and the outdoors.

Rabb/Mandel Quad
Sarah Bierman ’14: The Enchanted Life of Trees. Look up: Little copper people, chilling out in trees.

North of Shapiro Campus Center
Sarah Hershon ’14: Knit Graffiti. Knitted stripes transform the campus landscape.

Shapiro Campus Center Atrium
Kelsey Elverum PB ’12: Knuckle Sandwich. Cast-plaster and bronze sculpture inspired by Rose artists Claes Oldenburg, Tom Wesselman, Jasper Johns and other neo-dadaist and Pop artists.

Usdan Student Center, lower level
Abigail Drapkin ’12: Flickring Glance. Inspired by two artists on view at the Rose: James Rosenquist’s glimpse into the flicker of modern consciousness, and Bruce Conner’s onslaught of digital images, a video sculpture sourced from a Brandeis community Flickr account.

Goldfarb Library
Jade Garisch ’15: Quiet Voices. Multimedia sculpture inspired by a student’s poem about finding solace in the stacks. Goldfarb 2, next to the Archives and
Special Collections display.

Amira Mintz-Morgenthau ’12: The Wall. Reactivate memory of a divided world, city, or campus, and express yourself on this sculptural installation outside the library. Outside main entrance.

Sinead Sinnott ’12: This Is Not a Test Screen. Get a healthy dose of neon from this large-scale painting inspired by Nam June Paik’s “Charlotte Moorman II,” on view at the Rose. Farber 3.

Women’s Studies Research Center
Chaimae Mechtaly ’15: Portraits of Lost History. Portraits in oils of Berber Jewish women who resisted the invasion of north Africa in the seventh century.