Why study the Arts at Ohio State?

Why study the Arts at Ohio State?

The visual and performing arts are a centerpiece of The Ohio State University. Our rich and challenging curriculum and professional faculty artists cultivate a vibrant environment where unlimited opportunities exist for creativity, free expression, real-world experience, strong traditions and community engagement.

PAPER, PLASTIC OR PERFORMANCE?

For dance alumna Lilianna Kane (BFA, 2017), the grocery store isn’t just a place to pick up her favorite produce and canned goods. It’s a place for self-expression.

Kane has turned grocery aisles in Columbus into stages through her initiative, Grocery Dance. The site-specific project brings dance to unconventional venues and focuses on raising awareness for food accessibility.

With the help of current and past Ohio State dance students, she stages dance in the supermarkets, most recently at Lucky’s Market in Clintonville, to showcase her dancers’ talents and to collect food donations for local food kitchens, a combination she sees as mutually beneficial for all.

"The dancers get to indulge in the pleasure of dancing and performing, audience members still get to enjoy spectatorship, and energy [and] attention is clearly directed towards serving some other aspect of the community."

"When dance performance is directly tied to a form of outreach such as a food drive [or] fundraising, I feel that everybody wins in some sense." -Lilianna Kane

Faculty Spotlight: Charles Csuri Creates Interactive Game

Faculty Spotlight: Charles Csuri Creates Interactive Game

Charles (Chuck) Csuri, computer animation pioneer and professor emeritus in the Advanced Computing Center for the Arts and Design (ACCAD), age 95, has published a new interactive game, ScatterTile, available on the Apple App Store.

It features Csuri’s colorful computer animations, created over the span of more than half a century. Players are invited to share in a sense of play by sliding pieces into place to complete these works of art.

Csuri said he was approached by a local group of gamers to see if he wanted to design a game. “ScatterTile was my response to that,” he added. “They assisted me with many technical matters and taught me about how games work on the Internet.” He was assisted in developing the game by programmer Alex Patton and artist Shannon Frechen.

Response to the game has been positive. “It’s interesting to see if people even recognize it as pieces of art instead of just solving a challenge,” he said. “People seem to like the idea of a moving puzzle game. They say it’s very cool!”

Csuri’s sense of playful curiousity led to the innovations that helped form the visual structure and graphics capabilities of computers as we know them today. He has created thousands of works of computer art from its infancy in the 1960s to this game, first marketed in late 2017.

Cultural Hot Spots

Urban Arts Space

Urban Arts Space


The Urban Arts Space encourages transformative experiences that expand worldviews, offer hands-on practical experiences in the arts and education and develop new career skills to reflect an entrepreneurial culture.

Crane Cafe

World Media and Culture Center and Crane Café


Globalization is bringing profound changes in the economic, political, technological and cultural lives of nations around the world. These changes influence how education is understood, who it serves, how it is assessed, and how it is implemented. 

Orton Geological Museum


The Orton Geological Museum is located in Orton Hall. Part of the School of Earth Sciences, the Museum plays a key role in teaching, outreach and research. It is open to the public free of charge from 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. Monday through Friday. 

Hopkins Hall Gallery

Hopkins Hall Gallery


Surrounded by walls of glass and natural light, this venue presents a diverse array of exhibitions that inspire collaboration, discussion, and growth among the university community.

Museum of Classical Archeology

Museum of Classical Archaeology


Classical archaeology is the study of the art, architecture, and culture of the ancient Greeks and Romans, on the basis of their archaeological remains. This museum is designed to provide a significant focus for ongoing teaching, research, and outreach.

Sullivant Hall

Sullivant Hall


Sullivant Hall brings together multiple arts units on campus, opening up new creative opportunities for students to work together in the visual and performing arts with state-of-the-art teaching, research and performance spaces.

Music/Dance books

Music and Dance Library


The Music and Dance Library, situated on the second floor of the 18th Avenue Library, houses approximately 80,000 disc and tape recordings, 130,000 books and scores, 12,000 serials, 5,600 microfilms, and a large collection of DVD and VHS videos.

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