McRobbie: IU’s Renowned Creative Arts Culture to be Enhanced by University Cinema

Indiana University President Michael McRobbie tells us what’s unique about IU. (Thanks to all the presidents who participated this week — and a special thanks to our readers.)

  • Tell us something that not enough people know about your college or university that makes it such a special place.

IU has a magnificent tradition in the creative arts and the humanities that sometimes can go overlooked but has a major impact on our quality of life as Hoosiers. We have a myriad of areas—from language and literature to fine and performing arts—where IU programs are among the finest in the world, and our superb arts facilities across all of our campuses attract hundreds of thousands of people to art exhibits, ballets, concerts, lectures, plays, operas, and other events that typically are only offered in the nation’s major metropolitan areas. Our Bloomington campus alone hosts thousands of these types of events each year, many of which take place at the world-renowned Jacobs School of Music.

There is one area, though, where IU has had a superb scholarly reputation but has had no facilities, and this is film. We have remarkable cinematic collections, including our Black Film Center Archive, the David Bradley Film Collection, and our general library collection, which together contain tens of thousands of items. Last fall, we broke ground on a new University Cinema, which will feature a combination of digital cinema and traditional projection capabilities that will place it among the top tier of similar facilities around the world. It will show film classics, as well as the latest digital experimental, international, and scientific cinematic creations. We are extremely excited to unveil this state-of-the-art facility, which will serve scholars, students, and the broader community and showcase the masterpieces of cinema as they were meant to be seen.

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