Mason Gross School of the Arts is the arts conservatory at

Rutgers University Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and was ...

New Brunswick, New Jersey New Brunswick is a city in and the seat of government of Middlesex County, in the U.S. state of New Jersey.Mason W. Gross, the sixteenth president of

Rutgers Rutgers University (; RU), officially Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey, is a public land-grant research university consisting of four campuses in New Jersey. Chartered in 1766, Rutgers was originally called Queen's College, and w ...

. Mason Gross offers the Bachelor of Fine Arts in Dance, Theater, Digital Filmmaking, 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 recently introduced a new program in the Visual Arts that offers a Bachelor of Design. MasonGrossSchoolRutgers!

Mason Gross was founded in 1976 as a school of the fine and

performing arts The performing arts are arts such as music, dance, and drama which are performed for an audience. They are different from the visual arts, which are the use of paint, canvas or various materials to create physical or static art objects. Perfo ...

within

and in 1976 became a separate degree-granting institution from the other Undergraduate colleges. All fine arts departments at the other

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

' Douglass College campus with the exception of the Civic Square Building (on Livingston Avenue) in the city's Civic Square government and theatre district and the sculpture facilities (on the Livingston campus). Theater actor, director, and playwright Jack Bettenbender served as first dean of the school, from 1976 until his death in 1988. Bettenbender directed hundreds of theatrical productions, both at

and in New York City. An outdoor space dedicated in 2002 to honor John Bettenbender, the founding dean of the Mason Gross School of the Arts. The square is a gathering spot for students between classes, the site of impromptu performances and a summer setting for evening events. Avery Brooks gave the dedication eulogy. Bettenbender Plaza Bettenbender Plaza sits in front of Nicholas Music Hall, the performing arts center of Rutgers University, New Brunswick. The challenge was to design a plaza that would complement the theater’s activities as well as act as a gateway to the university. 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. Studios and stages for the school will be located in the

New Brunswick Performing Arts Center The New Brunswick Performing Arts Center is a complex in New Brunswick, New Jersey's Civic Square government and cultural district, in the United States. Construction for the US$172 million, 23-story multi-use property began in 2017 and was comple ...

upon completion in 2019. The Mason Gross School of the Arts has more than 500 events taking place annually on campus, alongside classes, rehearsals and numerous recreational activities. Has an 18% application acceptance rate.

Notable alumni and faculty

* Brandon Flynn (actor, ''

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'') * Atif Akin (artist, designer) * Emma Amos (painter) *

Andrea Anders Andrea Anders (born May 10, 1975) is an American actress. She is best known for her work on television, notably through her main roles on five anticipated but short-lived sitcoms, ''Joey'', '' The Class'', ''Better Off Ted'', '' Mr. Sunshine'' and ...

(actress, '' Mr. Sunshine'', ''

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'') *

Alice Aycock Alice Aycock (born November 20, 1946) is an American sculptor and installation artist. She was an early artist in the land art movement in the 1970s, and has created many large-scale metal sculptures around the world. Aycock's drawings and sculp ...

(sculptor) *

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(Tony-winning actor, '' You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown'', '' The Producers'' ''

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'') *

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(media artist) * Bill Bowers (mime artist and actor) *

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(actor, jazz and opera singer, ''

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Kevin Chamberlin Kevin Chamberlin (born November 25, 1963) is an American actor. He is known for his theatre roles such as Horton in '' Seussical'' and Uncle Fester in '' The Addams Family''. For his theatre work, he received three Tony Award and three Drama Des ...

(Tony-nominated actor, ''

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'',

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's '' Jessie'') *

Cook Thugless Cook Thugless is an independent music collective and hip hop act formed in New Brunswick, New Jersey in 2012. Popular in the New Jersey underground music scene, Cook Thugless gained national attention with their 2019 single titled, "Lockjaw". T ...

members * Melvin Edwards (celebrated abstract steel metal sculptor) *

Michael Esper Michael James Esper (born December 1, 1975) is an American actor, best known for his stage work. Early life Esper was born in Manhattan and raised in Montclair, New Jersey. He is the son of acting teachers William and Suzanne Esper, of the W ...

(actor, Broadway's '' American Idiot'') *

Paul Cohen Paul Joseph Cohen (April 2, 1934 – March 23, 2007) was an American mathematician. He is best known for his proofs that the continuum hypothesis and the axiom of choice are independent from Zermelo–Fraenkel set theory, for which he was award ...

(classical-contemporary saxophonist/saxophone historian) *

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(actor, "''

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'' ''

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'', ''

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'') * Jessica Darrow (actress/singer, voices Luisa Madrigal in

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's '' Encanto'') * Kristin Davis (Emmy-nominated actress, ''

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'') * Mike Dawson (cartoonist) *

Tim DeKay Timothy Robert DeKay (born June 12, 1963) is an American actor. He starred in the USA Network series ''White Collar'' (2009–2014) Early life Tim DeKay was born June 12, 1963, to Jim DeKay and Jill Vaughn in Lansing, New York, where he and ...

(actor, "White Collar," "Carnivale," "Tell Me You Love Me") * Angela Ellsworth (artist) *

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(Golden Globe-winning actress, "Ally McBeal," "The Birdcage") *

Midori Francis Midori Iwama (born April 16, 1994), known professionally as Midori Francis, is an American actress. She began her career in theatre, earning NYIT, Obie, and Drama Desk Awards. She received a Daytime Emmy nomination for her role as Lily in the Ne ...

(actress) *

Derrick Gardner Derrick Gardner (born June 3, 1965) is an American jazz trumpeter from Chicago, Illinois. Gardner began playing trumpet at the age of 9 in his hometown of Chicago. In 1991, he moved to New York City and played with groups such as the Count Ba ...

(jazz trumpeter) * Tina Gharavi (filmmaker, professor) *

Nancy Gustafson Nancy Gustafson (born June 27, 1956, in Evanston, Illinois) is an American opera singer. She received her B.A. from Mount Holyoke College in 1978 and her M.Mus. from Northwestern University. She has appeared in numerous productions at venues bo ...

(soprano, faculty) *

Israel Hicks Israel Theo Hicks (August 23, 1943 – July 3, 2010) was an American theatre director who produced works at regional theaters around the country and Off Broadway, and was best known for his stagings of the entire series of plays by August Wils ...

(stage director who presented

August Wilson August Wilson ( Frederick August Kittel Jr.; April 27, 1945 – October 2, 2005) was an American playwright. He has been referred to as the "theater's poet of Black America". He is best known for a series of ten plays, collectively called ' (or ...

's entire 10-play Pittsburgh Cycle; 1943–2010) *Mary Howard (set and production designer) * Sean Jones (former lead trumpet in the Lincoln Center Jazz Orchestra) *

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(actress) *

Allan Kaprow Allan Kaprow (August 23, 1927 – April 5, 2006) was an American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art. He helped to develop the "Environment" and " Happening" in the late 1950s and 1960s, as well ...

(American painter, assemblagist and a pioneer in establishing the concepts of performance art; August 23, 1927 – April 5, 2006) *

Roy Lichtenstein Roy Fox Lichtenstein (; October 27, 1923 – September 29, 1997) was an American pop artist. During the 1960s, along with Andy Warhol, Jasper Johns, and James Rosenquist among others, he became a leading figure in the new art movement. ...

(pop artist) * Linda Lindroth (artist) * Ardele Lister (media artist) * Raphael Montañez Ortíz (performance artist) *

Matt Mulhern Matt Mulhern (born July 21, 1960) is an American actor and historian who has starred in such films as ''One Crazy Summer'' and ''Biloxi Blues'', and such television series such as ''Major Dad'', '' JAG'', and '' Rescue Me'' (playing Lt. John Sta ...

(actor, writer, director, historian, "Biloxi Blues, Major Dad, Duane Hopwood") *

Tarik O'Regan Tarik Hamilton O'Regan (; born 1 January 1978) is a British and American composer. His compositions number over 100 and are partially represented on 43 recordings which have been recognised with two Grammy nominations. He is also the recipien ...

(composer) * Nell Irvin Painter (artist, historian, author, '' The History of White People'') *

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(lead singer,

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) *

Cristina Pato Cristina Pato Lorenzo (born August 17, 1980) is a Galician bagpiper, pianist and composer. She is a member of the Silk Road Ensemble led by Yo-Yo Ma and an educational adviser to the Silk Road Project. In 2017 she was collaborating with Harvard ...

(musician with Yo-Yo Ma's Silk Road Ensemble) * Tom Pelphrey (Emmy-winning actor, "Guiding Light," "As The World Turns"; Broadway's "End of the Rainbow") *

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(voice actress) * William Pope.L (performance artist) * Melissa Potter (artist) *

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(actress, "Third Watch," Broadway's "Death of a Salesman") *

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(actress, singer, "Dreamgirls," "Moesha") * Charles Ray (artist) * Harry Romero (DJ and record producer known as "Harry Choo Choo Romero") *

Martha Rosler Martha Rosler (born 1943) is an American artist. She is a conceptual artist who works in photography and photo text, video, installation, sculpture, and performance, as well as writing about art and culture. Rosler's work is centered on everyday ...

(artist) *

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(actress) * Gary Schneider (artist) *

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(painter and sculptor) * Katrín Sigurdardóttir (sculptor, installation artist) * Dave Sirulnick (MTV executive) *

Joan Snyder Joan Snyder (born April 16, 1940) is an American painter from New York. She is a MacArthur Fellow, a Guggenheim Fellow, and a National Endowment for the Arts Fellow (1974). Snyder first gained public attention in the early 1970s with her gestur ...

(artist) * Keith Sonnier (minimalist, performance, video and light artist) * Terell Stafford (jazz trumpeter) * Sebastian Stan (actor, Bucky Barnes / Winter Soldier,

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) *

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(actor) * Aaron Stanford (actor) *

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(first violinist, Guarneri Quartet) * Terrell Tilford (actor) * James Tupper (actor, "Men In Trees," "Grey's Anatomy") *

Dietlinde Turban Dietlinde Turban (born 27 August 1957 in Reutlingen in Germany) is the birth name and stage name of Dietlinde Turban Maazel, a German actress. Her brother is the violinist Ingolf Turban. Dietlinde Turban's first stage appearance at the age of ...

(actor, faculty) *

Stephen Westfall Stephen Westfall (born 1953 Schenectady, New York) is an American painter, critic, and professor at Rutgers University and Bard College. Biography When Stephen Westfall was an adolescent, he was fascinated by the social spaces created by archi ...

(painter) *

John Yau John Yau (born June 5, 1950) is an American poet and critic who lives in New York City. He received his B.A. from Bard College in 1972 and his M.F.A. from Brooklyn College in 1978. He has published over 50 books of poetry, artists' books, fictio ...

(poet) *Nicholas Alexander Chavez (actor, did not graduate)

Notable alumni and faculty

See also

References

Related links