Lewis Center for the Arts

The Lewis Center for the Arts is designed to put the creative and performing arts at the heart of the Princeton experience. The Lewis Center’s mission is based on the conviction that exposure to the arts, particularly to the experience of producing art, is a vital component of intellectual development and interpersonal understanding. The new Lewis Arts complex unites Princeton’s academic programs in Creative Writing, Dance, Music Theater, Theater, Visual Arts, and the interdisciplinary Princeton Atelier. Opened in early fall 2017, the Center elevates the University’s valued commitment to the arts by providing a center for students, faculty and art enthusiasts. In his remarks at the Center’s opening ceremony, President Eisgruber remarked that “The opening of the new Lewis Arts complex is an extraordinary milestone for Princeton that will usher in a brilliant new era of arts scholarship, training, exploration, and performance.” The 22-acre arts complex expands performance, rehearsal, and teaching spaces for the arts. It is located on Alexander Road across from Forbes College.

The Lewis Center for the Arts also includes several other buildings across Princeton’s campus, including 185 Nassau Street (home of the Program in Visual Arts) and New South (home of the Program in Creative Writing and the Writing Center).

Between curricular and extracurricular offerings, Princeton has a thriving arts culture. The Program in Creative Writing, allows students to pursue original work in fiction, poetry, and translation under the supervision of award-winning practicing writers, such as faculty members Jeffrey Eugenides, Jhumpa Lahiri and Paul Muldoon. The Programs in Dance and Theater offer credit and non-credit courses, as well as productions, concerts, and workshops in facilities throughout the campus, including the Berlind Theatre. In the studio, the rehearsal room and onstage, the Program in Music Theater focuses on the future of musicals, opera, cabaret and more. The Visual Arts Program has studio courses in ceramics, computer graphics, drawing, painting, photography, printmaking, sculpture, and video production. The Princeton Atelier, founded by Nobel Laureate Toni Morrison, brings many renowned creative artists to the University to conduct semester-long seminars for undergraduates.

The Music Department provides all Princeton University students with the opportunity to learn from world-renowned composers, historians and theorists, to take instrumental or voice lessons in the private studios of eminent professional performers and performance courses in chamber music, opera, vocal ensembles, and to audition to perform with our six jazz groups, three choruses, two orchestras (including Princeton University Orchestra), a wind ensemble and a laptop orchestra

The Woolworth Center is home to the Department of Music and contains the Mendel Music Library, classrooms, practice rooms, faculty offices, recording studios and a large rehearsal room (McAlpin Auditorium). The department concentrates on the history and theory of music and is especially strong in composition instruction. It is possible to concentrate in music at Princeton, although more students pursue the Certificate in Musical Performance. While the department offers no instrumental or voice instruction for credit, lessons are available and, for students involved in a department activity or enrolled in composition classes, partially subsidized by the University.

Princeton has a wide range of dance groups on campus that are governed by the Performing Arts Council. There are four core groups including diSiac, BodyHype, Black Arts Company (BAC) and eXpressions. They all focus on a variety of dance styles which may include: hip-hop, modern, lyrical, contemporary, jazz, tap, breaking and more.

There is also Princeton University Ballet and the Highsteppers (stepping). As well as several cultural dance groups including Dorobucci (African Dance Group), Más Flow (Latin Dance group), Naacho (South Asian), Bhangra (collegiate team that performs bhangra, an upbeat folk dance originating from the Punjab region of India), plus Irish dance, tap dance, belly dance and more!

There are countless music groups on campus, and most students in these groups are not majoring in music. Such groups include six departmental ensembles, Princeton University Rock Band (PURE), Princeton Electronica, and Princeton Pianists Ensemble (PPE). The Princeton University Band is especially visible on campus, as the high-energy, no-audition scramble band that dresses in orange plaid jackets and boater hats and performs at campus athletic events.

There are more than 15 student-run a cappella groups on campus, covering every musical genre. They often perform in 1879 Arch or Blair Arch in so-called "Arch Sings," where they perform a few songs for fans and onlookers in the wonderful acoustics of an arch. Princeton also has a number of non-a cappella groups on campus, such as the Chapel Choir and Glee Club.

There are numerous theater groups on campus, representing all different styles of theater and musical theater. From the Princeton University Players (PUP), which is the only completely student-run musical theater group on campus, to the Princeton Shakespeare Company, there are new shows nearly every week for students and the community to enjoy!

The oldest theater group on campus and one of the oldest collegiate theater troupes in the U.S., is the Princeton Triangle Club. This theater troupe was founded in 1891 and puts on a yearly student-written musical that then goes on a national tour. Notable Triangle Alumni include F. Scott Fitzgerald and Brooke Shields.