The Visual Arts Complex
Construction is underway on the new Visual
Arts Complex (VAC), which will synthesize art,
history, and high technology to create a new
hub for creative expression. Scheduled to open
in 2009-10, the complex will be home of the
CU Art Museum and the Department of Art and
Art History, a cross-disciplinary program
ranked among the finest in the nation.
The Visiting Artist Program, a vital component of the
Department of Art & Art History since 1972, will have
enhanced space in the new Visual Arts Complex. Each
year, nearly a dozen nationally and internationally
recognized artists present diverse ideas and their body of
work during their visit to the Boulder campus. Each artist
gives a free public lecture, teaches a seminar class,
participates in a recorded interview, and provides
individual critiques with graduate students. The 2008
schedule includes Peruvian-Japanese installation and
ceramic artist Carlos Runcie Tanaka (shown at left looking
at an underwater installation he created in Lima, Peru,
titled, 36EXP Film Processing Pool).
The complex will enable art and art history
students and faculty to work in studio suites and
classrooms with natural light, and access a visual
resources center featuring a digital image database
containing some 350,000 slides. (Pictured is ceramics
graduate student Molly Hatch.)
The VAC will provide a cultural gateway for the state of Colorado by enabling a dynamic home for the museum's permanent Colorado Collection, a significant array of more than 5,000 works of art. The museum's new space will feature climate-controlled exhibition and storage spaces, permanent and changing exhibition galleries, a 200-seat auditorium for lectures and public symposia, a collection study center, and an educational workshop.
