Claire Trevor School of the Arts

Claire Trevor School of the Arts
Claire Trevor Theater and related structure
General information
Architectural style	Brutalist
Town or city	Irvine, California
Country	United States of America
Construction started	1969
Completed	1970
Client	University of California, Irvine
Technical details
Structural system	Reinforced concrete
Design and construction
Architect	William Pereira
Structural engineer	Brandow & Johnston
Website
http://www.arts.uci.edu

The Claire Trevor School of the Arts (CTSA, Claire Trevor) is an academic unit at the University of California, Irvine focused on the performing and visual arts. The four departments housed in the school are for art, dance, drama, and music. CTSA has undergraduate programs, masters programs, and a doctoral program in drama conducted jointly with UC San Diego.

The school was named in honor of the Academy Award-winning Hollywood actress Claire Trevor. The school represents the largest contribution to the campus by architect William Pereira, who oversaw its construction in 1970. It features a distinctive "modular" design in which individual buildings are connected by an overhead network of pillar-supported canopies. In 2005, the school's landscape was redesigned by Maya Lin in a retro-futuristic style, featuring an outdoor theater, fountains, decorative LED lighting and landscaping with native grasses and wildflowers. In fall 2011, the new "green" Contemporary Arts Center opened in the heart of the school, a $42.35-million building equipped with state-of-the-art studios and spaces for displaying, staging, and producing art. It serves as the new anchor for the art school complex.

Early CTSA professors included Mehli Mehta (father of Zubin Mehta), choral master; Eugene Loring, dance master with James Penrod as an assistant; Frank Stella, Henry Clay, Tony DeLap and John McCracken, who were art instructors; and Robert Cohen, founding chair of the drama department.