UCLA Arts Commencement Ceremony Highlights 2022

On Saturday, June 11th, hundreds of students, faculty, staff, and parents gathered in Dickson Court to celebrate this year’s graduating class at the school’s first in-person commencement ceremony since 2019.
Our undergraduate and graduate student speakers, Nina Diaz-Klein and Akana Jayewardene, spoke stirringly about the challenges they overcame and the uncertain paths they followed before arriving at UCLA, and how their studies have prepared them for the next chapter in their lives and careers. Our keynote speaker, Mercedes Dorame, a UCLA alumna who has shown work at the Hammer and the Fowler museums and taught in the Department of Art this year, spoke beautifully about how her Tongva heritage informs her multimedia practice as well as her own circuitous path to becoming an artist. Her father, Robert Dorame, Tribal Chairman of the Gabrielino Tongva Indians of California, had us dancing and singing as he performed two celebratory songs in honor of our graduates.
It was a joyous occasion and a beautiful culmination to the 2021-22 academic year.
ABOUT UCLA ARTS
One of 12 prestigious professional schools at UCLA, the School of the Arts and Architecture is the top ranked arts school in the nation and offers leading programs in four degree-granting departments: Architecture and Urban Design, Art, Design | Media Arts, and World Arts and Cultures/Dance.
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