U.Va. plans a new hub of creative life

Imagine a place where all the arts at the University are just steps away from one another. Then imagine spending an evening there.

Coming out of an exhibition opening at the University’s new art museum, you might stroll over to the gallery in the new studio art building to check out the latest work by students and faculty. Then, a short distance away, you will take your seat for a night of Shakespeare or Sondheim in one of the drama department’s new theaters.

Or perhaps your tastes run to string quartets or straight-ahead jazz, which you will find next door in the music department’s new recital hall. Or maybe you will walk just a bit further to a symphony concert in the new performing arts center. Along the way, you might stop for a moment to hear a student a cappella group singing pop tunes in the new outdoor amphitheater.

And imagine this: you will have a place to park.

Faculty, students and administrators have been imagining such evenings over the past two years, and they are not just dreaming. As part of an effort to strengthen its arts programs, the University has developed an ambitious master plan to build a complex of new, renovated, and expanded arts facilities on and around the Carr’s Hill area.

Parts of the plan are already coming to fruition. With a $9 million appropriation in 2000, the Virginia General Assembly funded a new studio art building. In addition to helping the studio art program meet the growing demand for its courses, the facility will provide personal workspace for faculty and studio art majors and will house a gallery for showcasing their work. Construction is expected to begin in early 2002.

With funding from both institutional and private sources, various architectural firms have been at work on feasibility studies for each of projects described below, and a landscape plan is being developed that will tie all of these structures together. The result will be a lively new center of academic and creative activity just north of Mr. Jefferson’s Lawn.

The University is in the early stages of a major fund-raising effort for the arts buildings. If its goals can be achieved, here is what’s in store:

• Restoration of Fayerweather Hall: Built in the late 19th century as a gymnasium, Fayerweather Hall will be restored and reconfigured to house the art history program. The neoclassical structure will provide new offices for faculty and graduate assistants, an archaeology study facility, new meeting and seminar rooms and space for the storage and retrieval of art slides and other visual resources. The state has provided planning funds for the project and is being asked to finance the restoration itself.
• New University Art Museum: The Bayly Art Museum holds some 10,000 objects spanning the history of art from ancient to modern times, but it can display less than 5 percent of its collection at any time. A new facility with more gallery space and proper climate controls will enable the museum not only to show more of its own holdings but also to borrow major works from other institutions. The museum also needs space to expand its educational and public services programs, including activities that serve thousands of area schoolchildren every year.
• Addition for the School of Architecture: The School of Architecture has more than doubled its enrollment since moving into Campbell Hall thirty years ago. To provide new space for studios, classrooms and faculty offices, the school is planning a major addition to the building as well as the renovation of existing facilities.
• New music building: The McIntire Department of Music will move from its cramped quarters in Old Cabell Hall to a new building on Carr’s Hill. The structure will provide the department with acoustically isolated classrooms, much-needed rehearsal space, and a recital hall. The building also will contain state-of-the-art facilities for the Virginia Center for Computer Music.
• Expansion of the drama building: Supporting the Department of Drama, the Heritage Repertory Theatre, and the Virginia Film Festival, the drama building will be enlarged to provide more performance, studio, and instructional space, as well as faculty offices. Classrooms will be soundproofed, and scenery and costume shops will be equipped with new technology to train students in computer-aided design. The additional facilities will enable the department to expand its offerings in such areas as dance, film studies and acting for the camera.
• Performing Arts Center: Containing a first-rate concert hall, this will be a superb venue for the Charlottesville and University Symphony Orchestra and other Music Department ensembles. It also will make concerts by major visiting artists accessible to larger audiences. The facility will have substantially more seats than the 986-seat Old Cabell Hall auditorium and will include wings, backstage areas, and other features necessary for the production of dance, theater, musical theater and perhaps opera.
• Comprehensive Arts Library: The intellectual hub of the arts precinct will be a new facility that combines the Fiske Kimball Fine Arts Library with the Music Library. Containing books, journals, musical scores, CDs, audiotapes and digital resources, the arts library will make the most of new technology. It will contain computerized systems for recording and storing images of art and architecture, for experimenting with sound and for creating original musical arrangements and compositions.