Mesa Pediatrician Dr. Ruth Tan Lim has been an advocate of the arts for many decades.
In early October, Lim made an undisclosed donation to Arizona State University’s Media and Immersive eXperience Center in downtown Mesa. Her donation not only provided seed funding for the Herberger Institute for Design and the Arts to establish a community artist residency, but the MIX Center’s production shop will also be named after her.
Lim’s philanthropy was inspired by her travels around the world and a little bit of history. Especially Maria Theresa, who was the ruler of the Hapsburg monarchy from 1740 to 1780.
When visiting Vienna, Lim learned about how Theresa was a big advocate for the arts, especially during peacetime.
“She had 16 children. And if they have no war, they can be creative and they can make the community vibrant and make it a place for people to be together for not just safety, but prosperity and quality of life,” Lim said. “I think it’s good to make the arts more viable and attract more people to live in Mesa.”
Lim hopes her donation makes the MIX Center a more attractive destination for high school graduates that want to pursue arts over a traditional academic field and also strengthens downtown Mesa as a community hub overall.
“We created a pipeline for students from high school to go into the alternative track for theater, for arts, lighting, sound and more,” Lim said. “The other thing is that the downtown becomes more like a hub where people will gather. Similar to the ... art center in New York. I hope the downtown Mesa area can become vibrant like one of those areas,”
Renee Cheng, senior vice provost, dean and professor at the Herberger Institute, explained how the community artist residency is going to help with that goal. Cheng is friends with Lim and praised her for her commitment to investing in the arts.
For Cheng, the community artist residency will provide a great opportunity for local aspiring artists to take advantage of the resources and manpower that the MIX center offers, without needing to be formally enrolled in the Herberger Institute.
“Dr. Lim understands that there are nontraditional learners and young people that don’t necessarily plan to do a conventional college career,” Cheng said. “She also understands that there are artists in the community that don’t necessarily feel connected to ASU ... So the idea to bring in a community artist is to bring in someone that might have different approaches or ways of thinking that are going to be a little different than what our students or faculty are doing, and we can learn different methodologies from them.”
Cheng said Lim is not just trying to improve the arts experience in downtown Mesa, but expand the reach that arts and culture has on the local community even further.
“Ruth not only understands through her own personal experiences with arts and design and cultural activities that it’s important,” Cheng said. “But she’s also seeing that it’s not reaching everywhere that it needs to reach. Nontraditional learners or young people that may not come to ASU or go to college at all, those are folks that are part of our audience and part of the people that we can help to express their voices and understand their ideas and goals.”
Ultimately, Lim said through this donation, ASU will hopefully be able to make its Mesa campuses one of its major hubs to attract talent and strengthen the local community.
“The goal is for Mesa to become a destination for people to come to. ASU is trying to have a secondary hub in Mesa like they have one in Los Angeles,” Lim said. “So eventually Mesa will become a destination for people to come. If you have all these facilities and programs, you will attract talent. It should be good for the community.”
The ASU Mix Center is located at 50 N. Centennial Way in Mesa.
After graduating from Arizona State University's Cronkite School in spring 2022, Connor Van Ligten spent a little over year as a reporter for WWL-TV in New Orleans before finding themselves back in Phoenix in October of 2023. Now back in the Valley and writing for the Mesa Independent and the Daily Independent, Connor is ready to tell meaningful stories and report on important civic issues facing Mesa. Connor is a big fan of the 49ers, Warriors, pro wrestling, anime, dogs and fighting video games.
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