When Glorya Kaufman decided to donate $18 million to help renovate UCLA’s Dance Building, which houses the Department of World Arts and Cultures (WAC), she made history. Her donation is the largest individual gift to the arts in the entire University of California system, and the largest gift outside of the health sciences to UCLA. The building will be renamed Glorya Kaufman Hall. It is the first of the campus’ original core academic facilities to be named for a woman.

Kaufman wasn’t looking to break records. As a philanthropist who for 20 years has supported cultural programs at UCLA, her concern has always been to share the arts with people who might not have access to them. Her commitment to help renovate this building, one of the campus’ original core structures dating from 1932, comes from a strong desire to provide a central meeting place for students from all backgrounds and disciplines, a place where

Glorya Kaufman

they will have the contemporary tools to work together and fully express themselves through art, dance, and music. “My hope is that through UCLA’s World Arts and Cultures program, students will communicate with each other and develop friendships and understanding,” Kaufman said. “Dance and music are international languages, and with them you can touch everyone.”

“We are so grateful for this gift. It’s something we never really expected,” said Chris Waterman, chair of WAC. “Glorya’s unique ability to catch the vision of World Arts and Cultures — to see where we were headed, and then to decide that this was something that she wanted to support — allows us to realize our dreams.”

The current department was created in 1995 out of a merger of UCLA’s Department of Dance, founded in 1962 under the leadership of pioneering dance educator Alma Hawkins (1904–1998), and the interdepartmental program, World Arts and Cultures. That program had been established in 1972 by Hawkins and faculty from the departments of Anthropology, Art History, Dance, Folklore and Mythology, Music, and Theater. It was chaired by Judy Mitoma, now director of WAC’s Center for Intercultural Performance.

“We’ve got anthropologists and folklorists working side by side with choreographers working with Peter Sellars, the theater and opera director and visionary, and it’s quite an amazing place,” Waterman said.