Arts and Culture

Immerse Yourself in Our Arts and Culture

At UC Riverside, we pride ourselves on our multicultural roots — and that extends to the richness of our arts and culture scene. In fact, we’re known as the City of Arts and Innovation. Both on campus and off, we offer everything from the visual arts to literary works and musical performances. So prepare to be immersed — and inspired!

Head downtown to stimulate your senses through the array of art exhibitions, films, events, and performances at UCR ARTS. Here, you’ll find the Barbara and Art Culver Center of the Arts and the California Museum of Photography. With more than 500,000 pieces in its collection, the museum is the largest photographic center in the western United States, housing the region’s most comprehensive public camera collection.

Interior of The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture

On the corner of Mission Inn Avenue and Orange Street, you can check out our newest high-profile museum, The Cheech Marin Center for Chicano Art and Culture — better known as The Cheech. The museum, which opened in June 2022, is a public-private partnership between the Riverside Art Museum, the City of Riverside, and comedian Cheech Marin. Visit to view, celebrate, and learn more about Chicano art!

Photo Credit: Riverside Art Museum

Students practice “Mountain and Water Remembrance Ritual” during their class, Dance as Ritual

UCR offers a variety of dynamic performing arts programming — including dance, theater, and music — on campus and in downtown Riverside. First in the nation to offer a PhD in dance studies, today UC Riverside is the only University of California campus with PhD programs in dance and music.

At UCR’s annual Writers Week, the longest-running free literary event in California, you’ll hear from renowned and upcoming authors. Students can also improve their literary skills through our Department of Creative Writing — home to the only Bachelor of Arts in creative writing in the UC system and an MFA in creative writing and writing for the performing arts. Tom Lutz, award-winning author and founding editor-in-chief of the Los Angeles Review of Books, is on the faculty!

Looking for more ways to engage?

Our Center for Ideas and Society — an interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research support center — offers fellowships, research workshops, and public events to strengthen the academic, social, and creative life of the university and beyond. And through our Gluck Fellows Program of the Arts, UCR students share their talents with our community via free arts outreach experiences in select schools, eldercare facilities, museums, and libraries.

On our vibrant campus, there are always opportunities to celebrate the arts and culture — from showcases by the Department of Dance to music festivals, film screenings, and other special events coordinated by our Associated Students Program Board (ASPB).

And if you make it out to our annual Block Party, Spring Splash, or Homecoming concerts, be sure to bring your Highlander pride. You never know… at some of these events you may even catch a performance by our very own UCR Pipe Band.

Arts and Culture News

November 09, 2026

Rejected TV pilot ideas helped create big hits

Somewhere in warehouses containing Hollywood's old records were the forgotten synopses of television shows that never made it. Gathering dust were pitches for dramas, comedies, and other programs that television executives rejected or that never got beyond a pilot episode. But many novel ideas within discarded pilots have been more valuable than anyone realized.

Kristin Chenoweth impersonates the character of the king of Siam, from “The King and I,” at the 2015 Tony Awards, with Alan Cumming as Anna.

November 02, 2026

Asian caricatures persist in musicals, scholar argues

In her forthcoming book, Donatella Galella coins the phrase “feeling yellow” to describe the profound sense of anger, sadness, and racial alienation Asian Americans can feel when encountering yellowface: the use of makeup, costumes, gestures, and accents by non-Asian performers to portray characters of East Asian descent.

October 28, 2026

New graphic novel retells Emmett Till’s story

Growing up in Mississippi, graphic novelist John Jennings was deeply impacted by the horrific death of 14-year-old Emmett Till from an early age. Jennings, a UC Riverside professor of media and cultural studies, is helping to bring that story to a new medium with “Framing Emmett Till: Exposing Dark Fear,” a graphic novel released Oct. 27 by Abrams ComicsArts through Jennings’ Megascope imprint. He formed Megascope in 2020 as a place to promote speculative and historical nonfiction stories about and by people of color.

Douglas McCulloh posing with photographs at a UCR ARTS exhibition

September 30, 2026

Exhibition celebrates California photographer's work

A new UCR ARTS exhibition showcases nearly four decades of work from late photographer Douglas McCulloh. “Dispatches: The Photography of Douglas McCulloh, 1990-2025” opened on September 12 at UCR ARTS’ California Museum of Photography, or CMP, and will be on view until December 20. The exhibition brings together all his major projects, from early experiments to works that were still in progress.

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Immerse Yourself in Our Arts and Culture

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