Alumni in the News

Altin Sencalar was named a Downbeat Critics Poll Rising Star for 2 consecutive years. Sencalar also received a 4 Star review in the August 2026 edition putting his album in the Best of 2026 Jazz Albums.

Alberto McKelligan Hernández has published his first book focused on Mexican art. I Want to Dance with You focuses on five contemporary Mexican women artists—Gina Arizpe, Melissa García, Nuria Montiel, Brenda Anayatzin Ortiz, and Laura Valencia—analyzing their artistic projects since the early 2000s as a response to escalations in the Mexican drug war, femicide, state-sanctioned violence and globalization. Employing the Red de Feminismos Descoloniales's concept of descolonización to examine the delegitimization of subjective knowledges as a means to uphold colonialism, capitalism, and patriarchy, Alberto McKelligan Hernández analyzes the work of these artists as a form of resistance against the state's authoritarian policies. He shows how these artists confront these social and state problems through innovative art projects that foster resistance and solidarity among Mexico's diverse communities and how their works collectively reimagine a more hopeful and egalitarian future for Mexico.

Robert Honstein's new album, Horizon Line, releases on June 12, 2026 on New Focus Recordings. Featuring three compositions spanning a decade of creative work, the album reflects on his dual fascination with the string quartet and the concept of landscape. Featured collaborators include Mivos Quartet, Bergamot Quartet, percussionist Abby Fisher, violinists Alyssa Wang and Kiyoshi Hayashi, violist Beste Niknaz Modiri, and cellist Jacques Lee Wood.

Kulp served five years as director and two years as associate dean of the College of the Arts at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette. His next role is driving school buses part-time for Lafayette Parish Schools. 

Ariel Wood’s solo exhibition porous takes as its primary point of reference the detention basins neighboring carceral facilities in Georgetown, TX.

John McAllister, a Massachusetts painter who graduated from the University of Texas at Austin in 1999, has been awarded $20,000 in unrestricted funds as part of the inaugural Dallas Art Prize. His work will be featured in the booth of Los Angeles- and New York-based James Fuentes Gallery at the 2026 Dallas Art Fair.