CalArts Attracts Notice, Money for its Foreign Art Project : Education: Institute has been presenting artists from other cultures to broaden its Euro-American tradition.

Last month, the Irvine Foundation gave $700,000 to CalArts. It was by no means the largest grant the Valencia art school has received, but it came as an important vote of confidence for a grand adventure CalArts set out on a year ago.

In awarding the money, the Irvine Foundation singled out CalArts’ recent efforts to bring Asian, African and Latin American artists to Los Angeles. The school, through its Intercultural Arts Project, has been trying to attract foreign artists to perform and teach on campus.

Cross-cultural teaching was popular back in the 1960s, but CalArts has hopes that its experiment redux will produce revolutionary results. During the past year, the school has hosted, among other groups, a choir of Tibetan monks, the Peking Opera Troupe, three Soviet animators and an Indonesian dance troupe. Some of these groups stayed for only one night’s performance; others remained to work with CalArts students.

“I would hope that for various students, this can give them a greatly broadened view, can give them resources that they have never known about in making their own art,” said Nicholas England, who runs the intercultural project. “I don’t think it’s crazy to say that in 25 or 30 years, something very different can come from these types of experiences.”

Eclecticism is a tradition at CalArts, but when the project was started last fall by incoming president Steven Lavine, it was not universally welcomed. Students and faculty argued that they already had enough to study and teach. Some worried that the intercultural project would draw money away from other, more basic programs.

“As a new president starting a new program, people here looked around and said, ‘What’s he up to?’ ” Lavine said.

In its inaugural year, the project’s two dozen or so performances were received with mixed emotions. A modicum of suspicion lingered as some events attracted large audiences and some didn’t.

“You can’t force things on people,” England said, “especially not on artists.”

But enthusiasm for the project is growing.

“I actually think it’s gone pretty well,” said Crystine Lawson, dean of the dance school, who expressed concerns a year ago. “We still need to get it more into our curriculum. It’s a question of moving from just performances into meaningful workshops.”

And the intercultural project attracted the Irvine Foundation’s attention. The foundation awards money to CalArts every year, but this year’s grant was larger than usual and tied directly to the intercultural project.

“Our own strongest focus is in the area of multicultural involvement,” said Jon Orders, a program officer for the foundation. Orders was, until recently, a vice president at CalArts.

The grant represents a significant amount of money for a school that received almost $3.5 million in gifts and government grants last year. The Irvine Foundation money will be divided among scholarships for minority students, general scholarships and funds for visiting artists and the intercultural project.

“We know we’ve got the money,” said Elaine Wintman, a CalArts fund-raiser. “Now when something really incredible comes along, we can say, ‘Yes, let’s go for it.’ ”

As the project progresses, England and Lavine hope that CalArts’ individual schools--for instance, the School of Dance and the School of Theater--will become more involved. They hope the individual schools will join with the intercultural project by combining their own “visiting artists” money with the project’s funds to invite more guest teachers.

“The idea is very much on the minds of everybody here now,” England said. “This is definitely something for the future.”