Art at colleges gets a bad rap, conjuring visions of posters of Klimt’s “The Kiss” tacked to walls, closet darkrooms for those moody photo majors, and student union performance piece marathons. A closer look at contemporary college museums, however, makes those ideas feel as outdated as a desktop computer.
Whether it’s big-deal architecture (SO – IL’s recently announced new building for the Williams College Museum of Art), important collections (the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin is home to Austin, the only building designed by Ellsworth Kelly), or influence off campus (did you know the Hammer Museum is part of UCLA? And is any visit to Cambridge complete without a visit to Harvard’s Glass Flowers?), the museums at colleges and universities are often punching above their perceived weight.
The Yale University Art Gallery, in New Haven, Conn., is the oldest university gallery in the United States, and has a collection of more than 300,000 objects including textiles, jewelry, paintings, sculpture, and books.
“People tend to believe that university art museums are just miniature versions of big, civic museums, that we’re the same, just smaller with limited collections,” says Amy Gilman, director of the Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin—Madison. “I would say to anybody who would ask that some of the most innovative work happening in museums, whether it’s exhibitions or thinking about collections or experimenting, is happening at university art museums because we’re actually nimbler.”
Gilman points to the Chazen’s decision in September 2019 to be open seven days a week from 8 am until 8 pm as an example of that agility. “That made us the most open art museum in the country at the time,” she says. “It was intended as an experiment: The hours of typical museums or galleries are set in some kind of historical stone, often closed on a certain day or with hours from 9am to 5pm and staying open late one night. We decided that we wanted to experiment with being open broadly because we didn’t want to assume that we understood when people wanted to come to the museum. We thought, well, we’re a university art museum, we can try that kind of experimentation, learn from it, and talk about it.”
The Chazen Museum of Art at the University of Wisconsin—Madison will open the exhibition Petah Coyne: How Much A Heart Can Hold on September 9.
The events of March 2020 meant the experiment was shorter than anticipated, but today the Chazen is still open seven days a week—now from 10am until 7pm—giving students and other visitors opportunities to visit during hours that might be less traditional but more convenient.
“At its best, a university museum serves both the university in terms of research contributing to academic excellence as well as the wider community—meaning the local, regional, national, and international,” says Gaëtane Verna, the executive director of the Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State University. “How do you create a space where you can present works by artists from all generations who are digging deep on a subject matter? And how can the ability to present this work within the scope of a university be also an opportunity to integrate more of the general population into what a university does?”
The Wexner Center for the Arts at Ohio State Universtiry, where an upcoming film series will explore the 100 films students need to see before graduation.
In June, the Wexner opened A Hole is Not a Void, an exhibit of work by Jonas N.T. Becker, who has shown work at the Museum of Contemporary Art in Chicago and the Institute of Contemporary Art in Los Angeles. “Jonas’s work is interested in the history of coal in Northern Appalachia,” Verna says, “and in coming to work at the Wex, they got money in order to expand their work, and were able to work with the OSU geology library to source maps for the creation of new work. That new work is being presented at the Wex now alongside other work that makes for a kind of conference around the history of coal in this region. There’s a meshing of a community-based project with the work the Wex was doing with Jonas already on a subject that touches an individual artist but also has an impact on a real community.”
Austin, the only building designed by the late artist Ellsworth Kelly, is part of the collection at the Blanton Museum of Art at the University of Texas at Austin.
And, of course, there’s the student element of things. “We have done a lot of things in order to be sure that students feel that they’re welcome in the museum, that it’s their space,” says Gilman. “We make the lobby very welcoming—we have longer hours there than we do in the rest of the building—we have a coffee shop; we have programming that’s not only geared toward students but often created by them.” The Wexner programs performing arts as well as film and video; an upcoming series will screen the 100 films to see before graduation, based in part on a survey of OSU students. It also offers internships and a fellowship program for students who might be interested in careers in the arts.
Just as college classes allow a chance for experimentation, trial and failure, and, of course, learning, campus museums offer an opportunity to not only experience the arts but also try things that might be difficult for other institutions. “Part of the reason why I’ve done so many innovative things here,” Gilman says, “is because the case I have made to the university is that’s what we’re supposed to be doing.”
Adam Rathe is Town & Country‘s Deputy Features Director, covering arts and culture and a range of other subjects.
