CARTA Celebrates America250: The Creative Forces of Democracy
A year of student work, performance, exhibition and public argument at FIU’s College of Communication, Architecture + The Arts.
America’s 250th anniversary marks a milestone in the nation’s history of self-governance, civic participation and cultural expression. At the College of Communication, Architecture + The Arts, that history is inseparable from the disciplines that carry it — the reporting that holds power to account, the buildings and public spaces where civic life happens, and the art, music and performance through which a country argues with itself about who it is.
Introduction
Across the 2026–27 academic year, CARTA marks the anniversary with a full year of student work, performance, exhibition and public conversation, anchored by the 30th anniversary of the Herbert and Nicole Wertheim Performing Arts Center. The programming is organized around three questions the founding left open and every generation answers again: how a free people stay informed, where civic life takes place, and whose stories define American culture.
Each reflects the college’s conviction that the creative disciplines are not a commentary on democracy but a working instrument of it. This page follows the work as it takes shape.
The Three Pillars
How does a free people stay informed and hold power accountable?
Student journalism, oral history and civic storytelling, including a first-of-its-kind digital layer on the Ronald Reagan monument that turns a static memorial into a teaching surface.
What are the places where civic life happens, and how do we design the next 250 years of them?
Architecture, interior architecture and landscape studios take on the spaces democracy actually occurs in — the plaza, the library, the polling place, the street.
Whose stories define American culture, and who gets to tell them?
Exhibitions, performance and music across a Wertheim @ 30 anniversary season — a year in which the building’s thirtieth and the nation’s two hundred fiftieth share one stage.
What’s Happening
The year in progress — performances, exhibitions, conversations and student work, updated as each is confirmed.
At launch the module may hold only two or three confirmed entries. That is fine and preferable to placeholder text. Show a short line rather than an empty grid when nothing is published:
- Confirmed Entry #1 | Date
- Confirmed Entry #2 | Date
- Confirmed Entry #3 | Date
More events are being confirmed. Check back through the fall.
Common Ground: Conversations across difference
A series of public conversations hosted by Dean Brian Schriner, each bringing together two guests who genuinely disagree — and treating them as people arguing in good faith. Journalists, architects, artists, scholars and inspired creators, exploring the same shared ground from different vantage points.
Free and open to the public. Dates and guests announced as each is confirmed.
Get Involved
For FIU Units and Partners
Bring America250 to something you’re already doing
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For Students, Faculty and the Public
Come to the Work
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Dear 2076
In the nation’s 250th year, the FIU community is recording messages to the people who will be here for the 300th. Ninety seconds, in any language, from anyone — students, staff, faculty, alumni, families and neighbors.
Recordings are preserved by FIU Libraries and opened in 2076.
CARTA @ America250: The Creative Forces of Democracy is the College of Communication, Architecture + The Arts’ contribution to FIU’s America250 commemoration, running through the 2026–27 academic year and anchored by the 30th anniversary of the Herbert and Nicole Wertheim Performing Arts Center.
Contact: [initiative email]