Welcome to RealArts

Doing art in the realm of practice

Often it's true that a university's arts curriculum is good and beautiful and sufficient unto itself. But perhaps just as often, learning the arts - truly coming to know the importance, value, and potential impact of creative work and ideas - will depend on whatever connections a university can help students make to the world beyond the university, where people work in the realm of practice, where business is relevant, and where businesspeople don't always know how to talk to "the creative people" and vice versa.

RealArts@PENN is a project designed to help some of Penn's most creative students make those connections.

Why this project?

We created RealArts in part to integrate art-world practice into the intellectual life of the university. We want RealArts interns to come back to Penn with new ideas for projects and coursework. Thus we will give preference to applicants who are juniors and sophomores. We will accept other candidates, but we very much want our interns to return to campus for at least a year after their RealArts summer.

Summer internships

In 2009 we offer seven fabulous summer internships. Not your typical arrangement, either. We are not talking about passing Penn students off to impersonal, group-selection and mass-orientation processes. Nor do RealArts@PENN internships turn out to be jobs as gophers. These are unique, special arrangements with the hosting entities. Once a student has been chosen to be a RealArts@PENN intern, he or she is it.

We will help you get situated and started. We will introduce you to the people with whom you'll be working. And we will pay you a stipend of $2500.

What's next?

Soon we hope the RealArts@PENN will expand its reach inside Penn and out:

  1. more and different summer internships;
  2. new RealArts-affiliated courses; and
  3. workshops, roundtable discussions, and project-based seminars with major figures in the business of arts and culture.

Across the Penn faculties are numerous teachers, scholars and arts practitioners who have been teaching and doing real art at Penn all along. We hope through RealArts to bring them together and combine efforts where apt. Here is a sampling of these faculty.

Thank you

RealArts@PENN summer internships are made possible by generous gifts from Paul Burger, Alan Berger and new special support from Dirk Wittenborn.

- Al Filreis, Kelly Professor & Director of RealArts@PENN
- Dennis DeTurck, Dean of the College
- Mingo Reynolds, RealArts@PENN Coordinator