With the creation in 1919 of an art gallery and music department, the
UCLA leadership committed to offer the study of the arts in a liberal arts research university context. The College of Applied Arts was established in 1939 with the inclusion of an art department. In 1960, the college was renamed the College of Fine Arts, which carried departments of art, dance, music, and theater arts. In 1988, several big changes occurred in departments throughout the school: Ethnomusicology and Musicology separated from Music, while Design and Art History separated from Art. Art History and Musicology entered the umbrella of the Humanities division of the college while Design and Ethnomusicology remained in Fine Arts. Then in 1991, the College of Fine Arts was disestablished, giving rise to two separate schools: the
School of the Arts and the
School of Theater, Film and Television. With the conjoining of architecture to the School of Fine Arts in UCLA's Professional School Restructuring Initiative in 1994, the school was then renamed the School of the Arts and Architecture. In 2014, a proposal was made for the creation of a School of Music for the college. The new school, called the Herb Alpert School of Music, created in 2016, would join the trio of “independent but complementary arts-centered” schools: the current School of Theater, Film, Television, a redefined School of the Arts and Architecture, and the new School of Music. In 2020, UCLA announced the Herb Alpert School of Music would establish the
Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience to support the research, scholarship and performance of American Jewish music. The name Herb Alpert School of Music was approved by the
Board of Regents after the acceptance of a donation of $30 million from the
Herb Alpert Foundation in 2007. In 2023, the Lowell Milken Center for Music of American Jewish Experience at The UCLA Herb Alpert School of Music organized a series of concerts and dialogues focused on race and social justice in the modern world. The series, which took place from February 26–28, 2023, centered around a historic performance of The Gates of Justice, jazz legend Dave Brubeck's rarely presented large-scale sacred composition. For the first time ever, Brubeck's sons performed as the accompanying jazz trio. The program also featured six recent and socially conscious works by contemporary composers, including six-time Grammy-winning pianist, composer, and music educator Arturo O'Farrill. In addition to the concerts, a daylong public conference on February 27 brought together prominent scholars and experts to discuss the historical and cultural connections between Black and Jewish communities in the United States, intimate analyses of Brubeck's Gates of Justice, and the contemporary relevance of music to social justice. == Facilities ==