Arts Gala and Starting the Conversation of Arts Representation

By Izzy Young ‘24

Photo from NMH Flickr

NMH held its annual Arts Gala on April. 7, celebrating all students involved in art classes, co-curriculars, or who were in an arts ensemble or crew during the 2022-2023 school year.

Described as having delightful food, dancing, and costume prizes for the best “fire” themed outfit, students enjoyed a night exclusive to those passionate and participatory in the arts. Laila Williams, ‘26, a dancer in the NMH Dance Company, said that the event “was fun and had good vibes. It felt good to be in a space with just artsy people.” 

Compared to the biannual Athletics Banquet, going to the Arts Gala is voluntary and has no formal dress code or speeches. 

Although the Arts Gala was fun, there is an ongoing conversation about whether NMH pays enough attention to the school’s artists as they do athletes and whether there is the equal representation between them. 

Jasper Graham ‘23, who is involved in both the sports and arts at NMH, said, “arts don’t have the same recoil as sports do — you can’t go to art presentations in the same way you can go to sport events which happen literally every single week” This begs the question of whether formality, praise, and conversation about and in NMH Arts is needed for faculty and student appreciation.

Despite controversy over the arts, Pearl Schatz Allison ‘23, who has been in NMH Dance Company since freshman year, commented, “The Arts Gala was very fun and commemorated all the hard work and growth that the dancers and all artists, especially seniors, had finished this year.” 

The Arts Gala allowed students to eat, dance and have fun with other art students as they celebrated themselves and the work they had done.

The next big art commemoration will happen at Class Day Exercises around the end of school and graduation. Two scholarship awards, The Timothy Taylor Award and The Rhode Island School of Design Annual Art Award, will be presented to two outstanding seniors who plan to continue arts in college and grant them at least 2,000 dollars for their studies.