Duke to begin work on $50M arts center

The center is expected to open in two years and will sit at the corner of Anderson Street along Campus Drive, near the Nasher Museum of Art and Duke Gardens.

It will feature a dance studio, along with a dozen multi-use studios, a 200-seat performance theater, a 100-seat film theater, a garden, lounge, library, reception space, a painting and drawing studio, offices and classrooms. Though it will provide an administrative home for the dance and film programs, it is not intended as a solely academic facility.

David Rubenstein, a 1970 graduate of Duke, gave the school a $25-million gift to help create the center. Rubenstein serves as chairman of the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts, a trustee of the National Gallery of Art and a member of the board of the Lincoln Center for the Performing Arts.

“Duke has made great progress in recent years in bringing the arts to the same level of excellence we expect in anything that the university does," Rubenstein said in a statement. "I look forward to this new building, and the programs and performances that will take place in it, becoming an essential part of every Duke student's experience."

His previous contributions to Duke have included major support for the Sanford School of Public Policy, athletics, fellowship and faculty programs, and the libraries, which recently dedicated the newly completed David M. Rubenstein Rare Book and Manuscript Library.

The new arts center at Duke is the largest and most recent in a series of university investments in arts facilities, programs and faculty that total close to $100 million over the past decade, according to Duke.