A New Home for Visual Arts at UW-Madison

The long-sought goal of bringing all areas of the University of Wisconsin-Madison Department of Art into a unified, state-of-the-art instructional facility is now within reach.  Two building projects – one now underway and another on the horizon – will elevate an acclaimed program to higher levels of excellence and will benefit students, faculty, the campus community, and the general public.

UW-Madison’s nationally recognized Art Department serves nearly 500 undergraduate and 100 graduate student majors; also, hundreds more non-majors take elective courses as part of a comprehensive, well-rounded education.  The undergraduate program emphasizes the breadth of the visual arts and liberal arts.  The art education program prepares the next generation of K-12 art teachers.  The graduate program provides in-depth preparation and research in specialty areas of visual arts and art education.

The Art Lofts 

For decades, the Art Department has occupied scattered, inadequate and isolated nooks and crannies across campus.  The goal of bringing all these pieces together has gained momentum with the development of the Art Lofts – the former University Warehouse near the Kohl Center – now being remodeled into state-of-the-art facilities for most graduate art programs. Construction begin in February and is due to be completed by the end of 2008.

The Art Lofts will include classroom and exhibition spaces, instructional labs, and more than 50 faculty, graduate, and teaching studios.  The glass lab and metal sculpture foundry programs moved to the Art Lofts in 2004 and will be joined in a few months by other graduate programs and studios, including:

• The ceramics and art metal facilities had been housed in the Education Building on Bascom Hill, which also is undergoing a major remodeling/addition. 

• The paper-making lab and faculty, graduate student, and teaching studios which had occupied storefront buildings on the 700 block and 1300 block of University Avenue, and on Randall Avenue – which have been taken down for other major UW building projects. 

Consolidating all of these programs into one location creates new opportunities for educational and artistic collaboration and cross-fertilization, while also allowing for increased sharing of equipment and resources.  This will strengthen the academic and artistic mission of the Art Department by creating an environment where artists can share ideas and create hybrid forms in mixed media.

Plans for the Art Lofts also include space for Tandem Press, the independent printmaking studio affiliated with the Art Department. Created in 1987 to foster research, collaboration, experimentation, and innovation in printmaking, Tandem has enabled more than 200 graduate students to work with nationally recognized artists, who come to Tandem to produce top-quality prints. The facility is located off campus in leased space in a state-owned building at 201 South Dickinson Street.

A New Art Building

Undergraduate art programs, meanwhile, still largely occupy the top two floors of the Humanities Building, which is earmarked for demolition in the Campus Plan. The Campus Planning Committee has designated a site next to – and integrated with – the Art Lofts for a new Art Building to house these programs.

The Art Building is tentatively scheduled for planning/design in the 2011-2013 biennium and construction during the 2013-2015 biennium.

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