Campaign update June 2020: Rome School of Music, Drama, and Art

From the institution of the University’s drama school by the Rev. Gilbert Hartke in the 1930s, to the combination of the programs of music, drama, and art into the Rome School in 2018, Catholic University has long celebrated and enriched the arts through its curriculum.

The main Campaign priority of the Rome School of Music, Drama, and Art is garnering support for a new visual and performing arts center. Other goals include the creation of a sacred arts center and the ability to offer additional scholarships, recruit new faculty members, and institute new music technology and cinema studies programs.

“Art in all its various forms resonates, reflects, and intersects with life in many different ways. We often speak of art and life as a metaphoric relationship; one where art is associated with the constructs of an external, public world, or as one where art blossoms within one’s private existence,” said Dean Jacqueline Leary-Warsaw in September 2019 during her convocation speech to the Class of 2023. “Our goal is also to increase knowledge and appreciation of artistic beauty as a means to achieve greater union with God.”

This includes enabling faculty to conduct important research, as well as offering students the opportunity to travel abroad. In 2019, for example, Ivo Kaltchev, head of the Piano Area and ordinary professor of music, took four piano students to the Orpheus International Music Academy and Festival in Vienna, Austria.

“The festival offers master classes, seminars, daily concerts (orchestra concerts, faculty concerts, student concerts, and other special projects), private lessons, sightseeing trips, and practicing facilities,” Kaltchev said. “All piano students performed and had their European debuts.”

The Art and Drama departments have already received significant gifts as a result of the Campaign, including a six-figure gift from Lorraine Chanatry-Howell, M.A. 1959, that generated a new art education program, funded a full-time professorship, and created an endowed scholarship fund for art education students. In the Drama Department, the Gattnig Memorial gift created undergraduate scholarships, helped upgrade the Hartke Theatre, and purchased production supplies. The Foeller Trust also provided funding for additional Hartke improvements and upgrades to classrooms and studio spaces.

The Rome School has developed and approved a new degree program, the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Acting for Theatre, Film, and Television. No other university in the Washington, D.C., region offers this degree, which provides intensive training in acting, movement, and voice.

The programs within the Rome School of Music, Drama, and Art share a common goal of striving to uplift the human spirit.