George Washington University’s Corcoran School of the Arts and Design is this year bringing all of its students’ end-of-year final presentations under one umbrella, combining visual art, performances, and lectures into a month-long NEXT Festival that kicked off this week.

Previously, the final projects of visual arts, performing arts, and research-based art majors’ programs within the Corcoran School were not branded together in this way — NEXT was primarily a visual arts show exhibited at the Corcoran’s 126-year-old Flagg Building on 17th Street NW.

Pulling off the festival, which includes fine arts, dance, musical, and curatorial work, is no small feat in this space. The Flagg Building is undergoing renovations to its windows and roof, as well as the HVAC system in the second-floor galleries.

This means that the exhibition won’t take up a full two floors, as it did in previous years, but will instead make full use of other areas of the building — such as the Salon Doré, an 18th-century French period room, where intimate musical performances and presentations will take place; as well as the Hammer Auditorium, the rotunda, and the large central atrium.

Other performances will take place in theaters around campus, including the Dorothy Betts Marvin Theatre and the Lisner Auditorium.

The festival kicked off Thursday with an opening dance concert and will continue with more than 20 events through May 12. For those interested in seeing the visual art: More than 65 student projects will be on display at Flagg from May 3-20. The public can visit the galleries Wednesdays through Sundays, 1-5 p.m. An extravaganza on the evening of May 4 will provide an opportunity to view the work while enjoying refreshments, pop-up performances, and conversation with the artists.

“We discussed the idea that NEXT really should represent all the programs in this final completion of the entire Corcoran’s body of work, and that a festival would be a really exciting way to umbrella all that, and give us a lot more flexibility in programming,” says Babette Pendleton, Corcoran’s exhibition and programming associate. “We’ve been having a lot of fun turning it on its head.”

Corcoran students, always crafty in their use of the space, have installed sculptures and painted works in the makeshift hallways the school erected for the construction project. The previously open-plan space now functions more like a maze in which visitors can find interesting artwork around every turn.

Social practice MFA student Christina Villadolid’s “In the Presence of Savage Women,” for example, is a site-specific piece displayed on the marble staircase ascending to the building’s south bridge. Amanda Bohn, a BFA candidate in graphic design, created five visualizations of memories that are common human experiences — “Waking Up,” “Laughter,” “Crying,” “Feeling Full after Eating,” and “Happy Birthday” — which will be displayed along the atrium walls, along with her accompanying book.

Next year’s festival could look wholly different if the renovations are completed by the end of 2023, as the university has planned.

Some of the second-floor renovations are intended to make room for galleries presented by the National Gallery of Art, as DCist/WAMU reported last year. The NGA will house works it owns from the original Corcoran Gallery of Art collection, along with special exhibitions of modern and contemporary art.

[Disclosure: The author has been an adjunct professor in GW’s School of Media and Public Affairs.]