West High School’s 53rd Annual Fine Arts Week 

On May 17, West High School began celebrating its beloved Fine Arts Week tradition. This year, the highlight of the year for many West students has undergone some exciting developments.

Fine Arts Week was created with the goal of showcasing and preserving the incredibly diverse talent of West’s students and famous art departments. In the words of West's current choir teacher Mr. Cao, Fine Arts Week is at its core an event used to “show the West and larger Madison community all the wonderful work the students were doing.” 

The special week of recitals and exhibits has done exactly that, for the past 50 years. Forever ingrained in the history of the school, Fine Arts Week will continue to play an integral role in West's community and culture. 

After years of construction and months of renovation of the auditorium, finally being able to host the event in West's new space makes the yearly event all the more exciting. Along with the auditorium, the ongoing construction has led to a lack of an art gallery space that has in previous years been used to display students' work. West’s ceramics teacher Ms. Roszkowski explained that Fine Arts Week will still feature a gallery space this year; however, some of the actual logistics remain unsolved. The location of the space that will serve as the gallery and its remaining construction is not yet finalized, but the students and teachers in the art departments are feeling hopeful for a cohesive area to showcase everyone's work from throughout the year. In any event, a dedicated gallery space will be an exciting upgrade from last year’s smaller-scaled “pop up” galleries. 

This year also saw the addition of Fine Arts Night. This event on Thursday May 2 was the very first extension of Fine Arts week, which included a night of performances highlighting West student bands, as well as dance and acapella groups. This celebratory night will now serve as an exciting new way to kick off the week of performances. Not only will this event allow for performances to reach a wider audience and create more openings for students to share their art, it will also bring in donations which will go to supporting Fine Arts classes at West. Along with this new expansion, this year's Fine Arts Week will include a schedule change to accommodate AP test-takers. Instead of taking place during the last week of April, the annual tradition has been moved until after most AP tests have finished. This year's Fine Arts Week began on Friday the 17th and continued on into the next week, allowing performers and students a stress-free and celebratory week to fully immerse in the arts.

Fine Arts Week has always had an undeniable impact on the students, staff, and community at West.  Spending the time to showcase the commitment and talent of everyone participating in the annual celebration is a big part of what makes West special. Despite the obstacles that the art departments have been facing due to construction throughout the past few years, it is clear that West is continuing to work to support and expand the beloved tradition of Fine Arts Week, developing new ways to make the celebration of Fine Arts even more special and impactful.