March 19, 2004

New Drama and Visual Arts building impacts campus

According to Frank Scully, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, "The arts at Loyola are an important component of the life blood of the university and the New Orleans community. The arts are about everyone at Loyola. More than 30 percent of our undergraduates are majoring in a creative arts-related discipline."

However, the Department of Visual Arts and the Department of Drama and Speech need room to expand. Through the current capital campaign, the old library will soon be a vital addition to Loyola's main campus, as this special historic building is renovated into the new Center for Visual and Performing Arts. This project benefits visual arts and drama students, as well as others all across campus. The new center will bring Loyola's arts programs together under one roof, and will significantly add to diversity of the current student body by joining students of all curriculums together on the main campus.

Drama students and faculty are currently cramped on the main campus, while visual arts majors occupy a single building on the Broadway campus. The new center will impact these two departments in very positive ways. Georgia Gresham, chair of the Department of Drama and Speech, states that the new building is necessary because it will, "give students access to state-of-the-art facilities to better prepare them for their professional career or graduate school."

Jerry Cannon, chair of the Department of Visual Arts, emphasizes that the new building's purpose is "to provide opportunities for student and faculty expression, research, and cross-media exploration through an integrated digital backbone for instruction, presentation, and investigation systems."

Gresham and Cannon also expressed several other important purposes of the Center for Visual and Performing Arts:

• To enhance the profile and accommodate a growing audience of Loyola theatre within the growing theatre community of New Orleans;
• To have facilities that match the professionalism that exists in all other areas of production and performance and is publicly recognized through press and awards;
• To attract top academic and talented students in theatre to Loyola;
• To place both disciplines into a facility that can accommodate, in terms of architectural structure, the program that has been developed. The current (Visual Arts) program is spread across two campuses and is delivered in a facility that is a very moderately reconfigured dormitory;
• To allow creation of a cohesive integration of all program components to maximize the advantages of each, minimize the duplication of facilities and equipment, and accommodate a program that has far outgrown the existing footprint of the current facility.

Scully sums it up best with his thoughts on the subject. "Art is not just slapping paint on canvas anymore. Theatre is not just about acting out Shakespeare. For both visual arts and theatre arts, the future is changing and technology has changed the planning, design, and implementation of arts projects."

However notable Loyola's current achievements and strong its national reputation, the institution must continue to press forward to meet the challenges of the future. By improving our facilities, the university will address the need to expand while preserving its distinct culture and campus community. The Center for Visual and Performing Arts will positively impact the entire Loyola community for years for come.

—Claire Kuehn, Assistant Director of Stewardship and Donor Relations