Description
Summary: Founded in 1967, the University Art Museum (UAM) at the University at Albany is housed in the Fine Arts Building designed by architect Edward Durrell Stone and known as an icon of late-20 th -century Modernist architecture. The collection consists of over 3,000 objects, including paintings, sculpture, prints, drawings, and photographs, by artists of the 20 th and 21 st centuries.
The UAM seeks funding to equip the Collections Study Space (CSS), a purpose- designed, secure 1,185 square-foot space in close proximity to the UAM in the Fine Arts building. The CSS would hold the UAM’s permanent collection (currently scattered throughout generic storage spaces in the building) and would also provide 155 square feet of wall space for collection-based exhibitions and course-related projects. The CSS additionally would have dedicated areas for work including the examination, photography, and framing of artworks, as well as a teaching space for classes of up to 20 students.
The CSS is seen as key to the UAM’s effort to serve university faculty and students as a space for creative, interdisciplinary inquiry. Faculty from across the university would be encouraged to feature works from the collection in their teaching, and to develop courses and projects based on the museum’s holdings. The CSS would also support the UAM’s work in developing museum-based pedagogy. The latter includes the museum’s current participation in a multi-year project entitled Teaching and Learning with Museum Exhibitions: An Inter-Institutional Approach, a partnership with four other academic museums (Picker Art Gallery at Colgate University, Wellin Museum of Art at Hamilton College, and Tang Teaching Museum at Skidmore College) supported by the Teagle Foundation. The project has resulted in the design of exercises to foster skills such as observational acuity, careful listening, and teamwork, as well as insights into the mutually defining relationships between vision, language, and knowledge.
Completion of the CSS would significantly advance collection preservation, access and presentation at UAM; and it would facilitate academic training in museum practice and in observation-based skills applicable across a wide range of academic and professional disciplines. Grant funds would underwrite the purchase of a state-of-the-art storage system, archival housing materials, classroom furniture, computer stations for access to the searchable collection database, and framing required for programmed works.
Recommendation: That the Directors of the Henry Luce Foundation approve a one-year grant of $75,000 to the University Art Museum, University at Albany Foundation, for the Collections Study Space.
