The Department of Art, Music and Theater has seen its day; enter stage right the newly created Department of Art and Art History and the Department of Performing Arts.

The university announced this week that the Department of Art, Music and Theater has now split into two subdivisions. According to University Provost James O’Donnell, discussion on separating the disciplines has gone on since the Davis Performing Arts Center opened in 2005.

“Academically, it makes a big difference to the department to be thinking of themselves as a unit, to be in control of their unit,” Anna Celenza, who has been named chair of the new performing arts department, said. “They have ambitions to get stronger in a variety of ways – that’s always a challenge – but we will work with them and see what we can do.”

Alison Hilton, the newly named chair of the Department of Art and Art History, said that she considers the split a “major recognition” from the university community.

“We have been encouraging the university to philosophically understand the idea that the arts in general are a lot stronger when they are within their appropriate framework. We all care about many of the same things, like building a strong person, but we do it in ways that are very complimentary and reciprocal,” Hilton said.

The split began to be visible even before it was formalized, according to Celenza.

“In many ways, we had already started functioning separately. . It was more that we discovered our fields had some major differences,” Celenza said. “The performing arts just grew so much in the last three to five years, and as a whole, we were becoming such a huge department and were just divided in many ways.”

Georgetown has not been known to have a strong theater program. The Davis Center, a recent addition to the university, was and remains Georgetown’s first arts-specific education center. But performing arts groups like Nomadic Theater have taken advantage of this and have made the center’s Gonda Theater come alive with its continuous theatrical performances. Celenza said that the split will allow performing arts at Georgetown to further expand.

“We can really focus now as a faculty on performances, productions and faculty hiring, whereas when we had these meetings and it was not just the performing arts,” she said.

“There was just less time to focus on what we were doing.”

In addition, Celenza said, as an independent department, the performing arts has been able to partner with performing arts companies in D.C., such as Arena Stage, American Opera Theater and the Post-Classical Ensemble, and look beyond the Hilltop for expansion and enhancement.

“It’s given the faculty more time to focus on doing more to get the most out of D.C. for our program,” she said.