Organization

Royal University of Fine Arts

សាកលវិទ្យាល័យភូមិន្ទវិចិត្រសិល្បៈ


The Royal University of Fine Arts (RUFA) is a public arts university in Phnom Penh, run under Cambodia's Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts.[1][2] It teaches architecture and urbanism, archaeology, music, plastic arts and choreographic arts. It is the main school of Cambodian classical dance, and with the ministry's arts department it is one of the chief keepers of Khmer performing traditions.[1][3][4] Its campus stands beside the National Museum of Cambodia and the Royal Palace.[5]

History

School of Cambodian Arts

The university traces its origins to a Khmer Arts School set up inside the Royal Palace. Because the palace courtyard was too small, King Sisowath asked the French artist George Groslier and seven Cambodian artists to set up a new Fine Arts School on the university's present site.[1] The first school is dated to 1917 by English Wikipedia, which gives December 14, 1917, and to 1918 by the music education directory.[1][2]

Groslier arrived in Phnom Penh in June 1917 to plan the school. His report of July 1917 proposed an art school linked to a museum of Khmer art and an arts administration. He carried out the plan from January 1918, and the Bloc des Arts building was finished in 1919.[5] The school took boys of 14 or 15 who could read and write Khmer, and it planned boarding for about 30 pupils from the provinces. It had six workshops: jewelry, cabinetmaking, foundry, modeling, weaving and drawing and architecture. Cambodian teachers taught in Khmer, using techniques and patterns from Angkor, the palace and traditional crafts. In 1922 the school was attached to the Indochinese Department of Public Instruction.[5]

University, closure and reopening

In 1965 King Norodom Sihanouk established the Royal University of Fine Arts to preserve and nurture traditional arts. It had five faculties. The Faculty of Choreographic Arts grew out of the national dance group and the Faculty of Music out of the music school, while archaeology and architecture were new faculties. The university closed in April 1975, when the country fell to the Khmer Rouge and all schools were shut.[3][6][1]

The School of Fine Arts reopened in 1980.[7] A sub-decree of October 1988 made it the University of Fine Arts again, and the music education directory dates its reopening as a university to 1989, with help from UNESCO and international donors.[1][2] It was later renamed the Royal University of Fine Arts. Asia Society's 2001 tour notes give 1993 for the renaming, and English Wikipedia gives a sub-decree of October 1996.[3][1]

Faculties and programs

The university has a Department of Foundation Year and faculties of archaeology, architecture and urbanism, choreographic arts, music and plastic arts.[1] Its full music program runs twelve years: two at primary level, four at secondary level and six at tertiary level. The Faculty of Music runs a mahaori orchestra and a symphony orchestra, and students study piano, flute, clarinet and traditional instruments.[2] The university also has a research unit for conserving and developing Khmer arts and culture. The music directory notes that funding problems continue to slow its progress.[2]

Students who finish the Secondary School of Fine Arts can go on to a bachelor's degree at the university or join the ministry's Department of Performing Arts as government artists. The university both teaches and produces new work, but its production budget allows two or three works a year at best. Government funds cover salaries and office costs, and international support sometimes makes productions possible.[7] Kang Rithisal calls the university an important base for arts education after the civil war. Amrita Performing Arts has produced works by the university.[7]

Dance and performing arts

The Faculty (or college) of Choreographic Arts covers dance, theater and circus. The university and the Department of Arts often share staff and take part in joint projects and tours, but the university is set apart by its teaching role.[3][1] Over the twenty years before 2001, the university notated and recorded musical pieces. In the 1950s and 1960s its artists began learning and documenting village performance traditions.[3] The Cambodian fishing dance, for male and female dancers with rattan baskets and scoops as props, was composed at the university in the 1960s.[1]

Master Chea Samy taught dance at the university, and around 1990 its dance students practiced a lexicon of 4,500 movements in its Phnom Penh theater.[8] Cambodian-American Heritage, Inc. writes that the university's curriculum lets a dancer master only one of the three major female roles in the dance dramas.[9] The Royal Ballet of Cambodia chooses some of its dancers from its graduates.[10]

Its students still perform at national events. On May 20, 2025, about three dozen students acted in reenactments of Khmer Rouge brutality and performed Victory Day dancing at the Day of Remembrance at Choeung Ek.[11] On September 10, 2026, the university hosted rehearsals for a cultural performance welcoming the International Conference on Combating Cyber Scams, and Deputy Prime Minister Vongsey Vissoth came to watch.[12]

Tours

Tours by the university's dance company include the following.

  • 1990: a tour of the United States by teachers and students of the University of Fine Arts, the first large-scale tour of Cambodian work there since 1971. Cambodian-American Heritage lists Los Angeles, Seattle, St. Paul, Lowell, New York City and Washington, D.C.; Cambodian Celestial Dance also lists Long Beach and Portland.[3][9][13]
  • 2001: Dance: the Spirit of Cambodia, a United States tour produced by the New England Foundation for the Arts, Asia Society and Lisa Booth Management, with artistic director Proeung Chhieng and more than 30 artists in 11 cities. The program included Robam Apsara, created under Queen Kossamak in the 1950s, and Hun Pen was among the classical dancers.[3][7]

Alumni and teachers

  • Hun Pen, who completed a bachelor's degree in choreography at the university in 2003[8]
  • Charya Burt of Charya Burt Cambodian Dance, who began training at the University of Fine Arts in 1982 and joined its faculty after earning a teaching certificate in 1990[14][1]
  • Devi Yim of Cambodian Celestial Dance, who graduated from the University of Fine Arts in 1988[13][9]
  • Sophiline Cheam Shapiro of Sophiline Arts Ensemble, among the first students when the School of Fine Arts reopened[15]
  • Proeung Chhieng, vice rector and dean of choreographic arts at the time of the 2001 tour[3]

Leadership

English Wikipedia names Heng Sophady as rector.[1]

See also

References

  1. ↑ 1.00 1.01 1.02 1.03 1.04 1.05 1.06 1.07 1.08 1.09 1.10 1.11 Wikipedia, Royal University of Fine Arts
  2. ↑ 2.0 2.1 2.2 2.3 2.4 International Directory of Music and Music Education Institutions, Royal University of Fine Arts (2021)
  3. ↑ 3.0 3.1 3.2 3.3 3.4 3.5 3.6 3.7 Asia Society, Dance: the Spirit of Cambodia program notes (2001)
  4. ↑ PBS NewsHour and KQED, the 1,000-year-old dance tradition (2015)
  5. ↑ 5.0 5.1 5.2 Wonders of Cambodia, George Groslier and the Cambodian School of Arts (June 2026)
  6. ↑ Britannica, Royal University of Fine Arts
  7. ↑ 7.0 7.1 7.2 7.3 Japan Foundation Asia Center, Asia Hundreds: Kang Rithisal (2020)
  8. ↑ 8.0 8.1 Chulalongkorn University, Hun Pen, The Revival of Cambodian Classical Dance after 1979 (2008)
  9. ↑ 9.0 9.1 9.2 Cambodian-American Heritage, Inc., master dancers
  10. ↑ The Nation (Thailand) and The Phnom Penh Post, Inside Cambodia's royal ballet
  11. ↑ Associated Press, Day of Remembrance at Choeung Ek (2025)
  12. ↑ Ministry of Culture and Fine Arts, rehearsals at the Royal University of Fine Arts (2026)
  13. ↑ 13.0 13.1 Cambodian Celestial Dance, About
  14. ↑ Alliance for California Traditional Arts, Charya Cheam Burt profile
  15. ↑ Wikipedia, Sophiline Cheam Shapiro

Sources

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This page was last edited on 26 September 2026, at 23:16.