Description

The Art Museum of West Virginia University (AMWVU), a potential first-time grantee, is a five-year-old organization with a very clear vision of its responsibilities–both to its collections and to its academic and regional communities. AMWVU is part of the university’s College of Creative Arts, which has more than 70 full-time faculty and a comprehensive range of degree options in the arts, including West Virginia’s premier training in the visual and performing arts. Opened in 2015, AMWVU has two major gallery spaces that, to this point, have been used for changing exhibitions. Having now experienced the demands of continually changing presentations on its small staff, AMWVU plans to repurpose one of the major galleries to accomodate long-term installations drawn from its permanent collection of over 5,000 works. They propose to divide the space into three smaller, discrete galleries, each of which will feature a different collection area.
In the proposed plan, one gallery will house selections from AMWVU’s substantial print holdings; a second will be dedicated to the work of Blanche Lazzell, a West Virginia native and a modernist who was among the best-known artists of the Provincetown School; and a third gallery for dimensional works, thematic rotations, new acquisitions, and curricular or rapid-response topical installations. Among the additional collections strengths (beyond prints in general and the works of Lazzell in particular) that will be featured in the third space are contemporary ceramics, work by self-taught Appalachian artists, and artists’ books. The proposed project entails three years of permanent collection programming in the new galleries, and periodic rotations of light-sensitive material. The staff will re-evaluate the project framework at the end of this period.
AMWVU has a keen sense of its mission, as an art center for WVU students and faculty, and as a lone regional art museum where many visitors, including a population of K-12 school- children, have their very first direct experience of art objects. Conversations with the project leader, and the grant proposal itself, have demonstrated that AMWVU is current in their practices: they are open to a wide range of interpretive approaches, and have already initiated conversations with an array campus constituencies (including the Division of Diversity, Equity and Inclusion) to explore programmatic opportunities for the galleries. They see their curatorial practice in these spaces as an opportunity to facilitate a role for art in the important civic conversations taking place on campus and in the world.
The new galleries will provide a more consistent public presence for the AMWVU collection, create cross-disciplinary opportunities for faculty and students to engage with them as curators and viewers, and highlight exemplars of art practice for students in the School of Art and Design. AMWVU anticipates that the expanded spaces for permanent collection will also encourage new gifts, including two collections—of works by self-taught Appalachian artists, and ceramics by the noted ceramicist Malcom Davis—already under discussion.
The proposed grant would continue the AAP’s efforts to support collections and art-related programming on college and university campuses and in the regions they serve.