PROGRAMS
Grace nurtures imaginative thinkers who possess the technical skills to create meaningful work. Across visual art, dance, music, and drama, we guide students to look closely at the world and respond with thoughtfulness, originality, and care. This journey begins in the earliest years and unfolds intentionally from junior kindergarten through twelfth grade, honoring each stage of artistic development—from exploration and play to the development of complex bodies of work.
Our curriculum is rooted in a pedagogy of joy, pairing discipline with wonder and encouraging students to refine their craft while remaining open to discovery. Students enjoy many opportunities to share their work within the school community and beyond its walls at venues throughout New York City. The vibrant local art scene serves as an extension of the classroom, offering regular encounters with museums, galleries, architecture, and live performances. Through these experiences, students situate their own creative voices within a vibrant cultural landscape and a historical lineage of artists and makers, coming to see themselves as active participants in the life of the arts.
Dance at Grace invites students from junior kindergarten through twelfth grade to move, create, and perform. Through technical study and creative practice, students develop an artistic voice and learn to use movement as a means of inquiry, expression, and connection. Working alongside faculty and guest artists from across the dance world, they engage with dance as both a discipline and a way of understanding themselves and the world around them.
Music at Grace guides students from their earliest songs in junior kindergarten through professional-level ensemble performance in the High School. Grounded in the First Steps in Music, Orff, and Kodály frameworks in the early years, the program builds musical literacy, vocal and instrumental technique, and the collaborative skills that come from performing together. From beginning strings and chorus in the Middle School to Jazz Ensemble, GraceNotes, and performances at The Cutting Room in the High School, students grow as musicians and as artists across every stage of their Grace education.
Visual arts at Grace develops students as inventive, abstract thinkers who learn to see the world as something to be made and remade. From the earliest explorations in clay, paint, and collage in junior kindergarten through the development of an independent body of work in the High School, the visual arts program builds technical skill, creative confidence, and a genuine artistic voice. Across nine studios at two campuses—including spaces for drawing, painting, sculpture, ceramics, printmaking, digital arts, and photography—students work with a wide range of materials and processes. New York City is a constant presence: Museum visits, gallery trips, and encounters with working artists situate students within a living artistic tradition and remind them that they, too, are makers.
“Our students have the unique opportunity to learn alongside contemporary practicing artists, gaining firsthand insight and mentorship as they develop their own creative voices and make meaningful work that responds to an ever-changing world.”
Colin Todd, Visual Arts Department Chair, High School
Drama at Grace guides students from their first theatrical games in fifth grade through the development of a full creative practice in the High School. In the Middle School, students build the foundations of collaboration, observation, and self-reflection—exploring theater as a tool for storytelling, social justice, and the study of Shakespeare. In the High School, the program grows into a rigorous sequence of courses in performance, voice, text, and technical theater, culminating for some students in the Theater Studies Major and for all students in the work of the Grace Theatre Company, which produces three main stage performances each year. Partnered with professional designers and directors, and performing at venues including Joe’s Pub, the Theater at the 14th Street Y, and The Public Theater, Grace drama students experience what it means to make theater at a professional level—in the theater capital of the world.
