UCI Arts Summer 2026 Faculty Highlights

A look at faculty news and creative activity from summer 2026

From a lifetime achievement award in ballet education to an acclaimed debut album recorded in London, faculty across the UC Irvine Claire Trevor School of the Arts (UCI Arts) spent the summer sharing their work with audiences around the world. Highlights include Monica Majoli's new exhibition at the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives and the celebratory final season of the National Choreographers Initiative, along with conference presentations that took faculty from Hong Kong to Barcelona. Below are a few highlights by department. Visit our news page for additional stories and updates

Department of Art

• Monica Majoli opened Monica Majoli: Countervision on Sept. 19 at the June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives, presented with Los Angeles Nomadic Division (LAND). The exhibition sets 15 new drawings within the archive alongside her research into the feminist photography workshops known as the ovulars, drawn from the papers of Tee Corinne, Ruth Mountaingrove and Honey Lee Cottrell. Majoli also curated materials from the papers of Simone Wallace, founder of West LA's Sisterhood Bookstore. The show has been covered by The Guardian and Hyperallergic. Read more.
• Rhea Anastas curated Conceptual Art and Christine Kozlov at Raven Row in London, her second exhibition devoted to the Conceptual artist. The show traced Kozlov’s work from the mid-1960s through the late 1970s alongside pieces by collaborators including On Kawara, Joseph Kosuth, Adrian Piper and Lawrence Weiner. The exhibition was reviewed in e-flux and in New Left Review’s Sidecar in June. Read more.
• Joe Lewis, professor and former dean of UCI Arts, released his second 12-inch vinyl album and CD, "de las sombras / from the shadows," featuring Marisabel Bazan, John Chiodini and Charles Gaines. Listen here.
• Simon Penny’s new book, Skill: Making, Embodied Cognition, Neuroscience, is coming soon from Routledge, with publication expected in December. Drawing on his 50 years of experience as an artist and maker, the book challenges the long-held assumption that skill and intelligence are different, arguing that skilled practice is itself a form of cognition. Read more here.

Department of Dance

• Molly Lynch received the Lifetime Achievement Award from CORPS de Ballet International at its 28th annual conference in July. Voted on by the organization's membership, the award recognizes sustained contributions to ballet in higher education. Read more.
• The National Choreographers Initiative, founded by Molly Lynch, celebrated its 22nd and final season with "The Last Dance" on July 25, honoring the choreographers and dancers who have taken part over the years. Across 35 years of NCI and its predecessor, the Pacifica Choreographic Project at Ballet Pacifica, Lynch has hosted 136 choreographers and 215 dancers from 61 companies, and many of the works developed there have gone on to productions in the United States and abroad. Read more.

• Ariyan Johnson spent two weeks in Paris training students in drama, dance and vocal movement, then choreographed and stage-managed the program's closing performance at the Fox Theatre. Her film Spiritual Cyphers was licensed for the Hip Hop Education H2O Film Festival in New York, screening in a lineup of films by women directors. Johnson also contributed the chapter "Using Hip Hop Pedagogy to Create Equitable Dance Spaces" to The Intellect Handbook of Dance Education Research (Intellect Books).
• Ama Wray co-authored Using a West-African Informed Mind-Body Movement Practice to Promote Flourishing in Minoritized Students: A Feasibility Study, published in Archives of Psychiatric Nursing. The study examines how a movement practice informed by West African traditions can support the well-being of minoritized students. Read more.

Department of Drama

• Juliette Carrillo was named writer-in-residence at the Ojai Playwrights Conference, one of eight writers selected from more than 1,000 submissions. She developed new work at its July 30-Aug. 2 New Works Festival. Read more. She also directed (Fruit)ion, a new Latinx musical by Kristal Ortiz with music and lyrics by Satya Chavez, at CARNAVAL, a festival produced by La Jolla Playhouse and Latinx Theater Commons, performing for an audience of more than 500. Read more.
• Daphne Lei, professor of drama and director of Illuminations, the Chancellor's Arts and Culture Initiative, presented her research on Shakespeare and Asian American theater at the Asian Shakespeare Association Conference at City University of Hong Kong. In Taipei, she conducted research on Chinese opera and was invited by Taipei National University of the Arts to discuss future international collaborations. She also completed two articles, forthcoming from Theatre Annual and Routledge.
• Vincent Olivieri, professor and head of design, had his sound design and score for Lauren Yee’s Mother Russia selected for the U.S. National Exhibit at the 2027 Prague Quadrennial, the world’s foremost theater design event. The production premiered at Seattle Repertory Theatre in February 2025. The exhibit will preview in Detroit and at the USITT Conference & Stage Expo in Baltimore before traveling to Prague. Read more.

Department of Music

• Irene Messoloras, associate chair and director of choral activities, is drawing international acclaim for "Finding Light," the debut album from her London-based professional chamber choir, Meridian, on Signum Records. The album has been reviewed in Gramophone and Choir & Organ, with BBC Radio 3 also weighing in. Read more.

• Amy Bauer presented papers at the 4th International Conference on Timbre at the University of Montreal in June and at Euromac 11, the European music analysis conference, at the Escola Superior de Música de Catalunya (ESMUC) in Barcelona in September, where she also served on the program committee.
• Michael Dessen, chair of the department, is featured as trombonist and improviser on the new recording of The Central Park Five, the Pulitzer Prize-winning opera by composer Anthony Davis. He also released an album with Cosa Bien Tejida, a collective he formed with Bogotá-based musicians during his 2023 Fulbright Specialist residency at Pontificia Universidad Javeriana.

Claire Trevor School of the Arts faculty are invited to share their updates. Please send news to Diana Kalaji at dkalaji@uci.edu to be included in future roundups. To learn more about news at UCI Arts, visit arts.uci.edu/news.