Dartmouth College has just announced that it has received a $50 million gift, the largest in
its history, to build a new visual arts center on campus.
What a contrast from Brandeis, in Waltham, MA, which has grown infamous for its announcement earlier this year that it planned to shut its Rose Art Museum. Brandeis lies only 135 miles from Dartmouth, in Hanover, N.H. Worse, in announcing the gift, which was made anonymously, Dartmouth President James Wright said:
Arts are at the heart of a liberal arts education, and have always been vital to the Dartmouth experience, empowering students to think creatively, challenge assumptions, and wrestle with demanding and often unfamiliar media.
Then Dartmouth’s Dean of Faculty Carol Folt chimed in:
Dartmouth faculty view the arts as a powerful way to understand human culture and history, and when practiced, to stimulate creativity, flexibility, and leadership. This gift will have an immediate impact on Dartmouth’s intellectual and cultural environment. It will galvanize the talented faculty we already have and attract others, create new opportunities for innovative teaching, and offer more students the chance to experience the creative process first-hand.
Ouch.
Image credit: © jeff stikeman architectural art 20
Dartmouth plans to build the 99,000 sq. ft. visual arts center near an outdoor plaza that links it to the school’s Hopkins Performing Arts Center and Hood Museum of Art, thus creating an arts district. The visual arts center, intended for the studio art and film & media studies areas, will have classrooms, studios, offices, and an auditorium, relocated from the Hood. Here’s the description:
The heart of the building will be the arts forum, a soaring, three-story space just inside the entrance that will enable informal gatherings, exhibitions of student and faculty work, and viewings of big-screen films. At the building’s center sits a shared digital humanities media laboratory. Studios are designed to let painters be painters. Printmakers will find high ceilings, abundant light, large worktables, and state-of-the art ventilation. Filmmakers will have controlled conditions for sound, light, and temperature. Drawing students will have movable desks, benches, model stands, and pedestals. For sculptors: suitable spaces for welding and metal fabrication, a wood and machine shop, and an outdoor sculpture court.
It was designed by Machado and Silvetti Associates, whose recent work includes the Getty villa in Malibu and the Rockefeller Stone Barns in Pocantico Hills, N.Y. Construction is expected to begin next year.
The gift apparently came from a family with long ties to the college; the previous record-holding gift received by Dartmouth was $25 million, donated in 1992, which went toward a library. This gift is part of Dartmouth’s ongoing capital campaign, which to date has raised more than $1.2 billion. There’s a bit more information in the press release.
Anyone for transferring from Brandeis?
Photo Credit: © 2009 Trustees of Dartmouth College