CU-Boulder Visual Arts Complex Scheduled For 2009-10 Completion

The University of Colorado at Boulder expects to begin construction of its planned $63.5 million Visual Arts Complex in late March with completion of the 170,000-square-foot building scheduled during the 2009-10 academic year.

The new structure will replace the aging Sibell Wolle Fine Arts Building, which will be razed in late December after nearly a century as a campus landmark. Campus art experts believe the new complex will enable students and faculty to synthesize art, art history and high technology and establish a vital new hub for creative expression in Colorado.

"Along with the new Denver Art Museum wing, CU's Visual Arts Complex will be one of the most important visual arts contributions in Colorado history," said Garrison Roots, a sculpture professor and chair of the CU-Boulder department of art and art history.

The complex will house both Roots' department and the CU Art Museum. Among other upgrades, it will feature climate-controlled exhibition galleries and storage spaces designed to protect and preserve the Colorado Collection, the museum's extensive array of artwork from Africa, the Americas, Asia and Europe.

"The Visual Arts Complex is poised to position CU-Boulder as a national leader focused on the integration of the arts and higher education," said museum Director Lisa Tamiris Becker. "The new CU Art Museum within the complex is designed as a teaching and research museum for the 21st century and will enrich the educational lives of students, faculty and the broader community," she said.

The complex will be centrally located on the CU-Boulder campus and attached to the ATLAS building. ATLAS, the Alliance for Technology, Learning and Society, boasts a black-box theater, a wireless area network and state-of-the-art classrooms. Together, the buildings will form an aesthetically pleasing and environmentally friendly nexus designed to teach increasingly tech-savvy students.

Kallmann, McKinnell and Wood, an award-winning Boston architectural firm, will join forces with Denver's OZ Architecture and M.A. Mortenson Co. to design and build the Visual Arts Complex. Like other new campus buildings, the Visual Arts Complex will feature the latest green design, technology and construction materials.

The complex will be the fourth major CU-Boulder project to be funded in part by a student-led plan that mandated additional student fees to subsidize critically needed buildings. Student leaders conceived of the plan in 2004 to make up for a shortfall in state funding for capital construction.

So far, student fees have contributed to the construction of the Wolf Law Building, the Koelbel Building, which houses the newly expanded and renovated Leeds School of Business and ATLAS, which debuted in October 2006.

Tamiris Becker said naming opportunities still exist for the entire arts complex, specific galleries and other facilities.

All of the new buildings are LEED-certified, which means they meet the highest standards for Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design, a rating system developed by the U.S. Green Building Council.

To learn more about the CU-Boulder department of art and art history and the CU Art Museum, visit www.colorado.edu/arts/.