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A work in progress |
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| Ground to be broken for new visual arts building | |||
| By Jennifer Messer |
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| A groundbreaking ceremony
to mark the beginning of construction of new art school facilities
will be held at the building site at 10:30 a.m. on Oct. 1. President Michael F. Adams, Chancellor Thomas Meredith and Carmon Colangelo, director of the Lamar Dodd School of Art will be among the featured guests. They will be joined by the art faculty, alumni, students and the art school’s board of visitors. “When the new art school building opens in 2007, it will allow for greater collaboration among students and faculty in a more unified environment,” says Colangelo. “As one of the largest units in the Franklin College, we are currently in nine different facilities throughout campus. I look forward to bringing all of our programs under one roof.” Designed by Rogers Marvel Architects of New York and -Atlanta-based architects Menefee and Winer, the 200,000-square-foot building will feature modern studios, lecture halls, galleries and a media center. It will be located in the Performing and Visual Arts Complex on East Campus, adjacent to the Georgia Museum of Art and School of Music. “Consolidating 13 departments currently scattered all over campus into one integrated state-of-the-art facility on East Campus is a firm- and career-defining opportunity,” says Tony Menefee of Menefee and Winer. “I will always visit the building to see how the students adapt the interior for their creative purposes.” Menefee is no stranger to the UGA campus. He designed and directed the construction of -the Peabody Awards Program gallery, the restoration of Moore College for the Honors Program, and numerous athletic association projects, including the Rankin Smith Academic Center, the women’s athletic complex and the Magill Tennis Complex. He is a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design Certified Professional and also directs the firm’s green building design opportunities. “An art school is a place for making and seeing,” says Rob Rogers, principal at Rogers Marvel Architects. “The new Lamar Dodd School of Art building will be rough enough to enable the acts and efforts of the students, yet finished enough—in just the right places—to facilitate the creative process and exchange of ideas that is so fundamental to an education in art.” Jonathan Marvel says that the design is intended to make the most of “the wonderful natural light that enters the studios in the daytime and the glow from those studios at night.” Classrooms are placed on the north faces of two long strips connected by glass. “In the evening,” he says, “the glowing glass connector will be the beacon, attracting visitors and users to openings and events and creating an icon in the Performing and Visual Arts Complex.” Rogers Marvel Architects was founded in 1992. Each partner has an extensive background designing significant cultural projects around the world. Recent projects include the Studio Museum in Harlem, the Pratt Institute’s Higgins Hall and the Dartmouth College of Art Master Plan. The new art building was funded through a $39 million state appropriation. Currently, more than 950 undergraduate and more than 80 graduate students are taught by 54 full-time and 25 part-time faculty members who teach in 13 areas of concentration in art history, art education, design and studio art courses across campus. The art school is named for Lamar Dodd, a native Georgian who studied at New York City’s Art Students League in the 1920s, then returned to his roots to head the art department at UGA from 1938 until 1973. He was responsible for significant growth in the art program, which moved into the current visual arts building on its completion in 1963. In Dodd’s honor, just months before his death in 1996, the department of art was renamed the Lamar Dodd School of Art. Today, the School of Art is among the most respected public art programs in the nation. The school’s graduate studio programs ranked 21st nationally in the latest U.S. News & World Report rankings of public art schools, and the graduate printmaking program ranked third in the country. |
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