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Vol. 38, No. 18 |
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1-9-2008 College of the Arts has endless options for its downtown gallery space
But it’s a good problem to have, says Kelly Stevelt Kaser, an Ohio State graduate and manager of the OSU Urban Arts Space at 50 W. Town St. It shows that a lot of people are invested in promoting the college to the community and want to see the new space succeed, she said. “We’re talking about it as a launching pad for our students,” Stevelt Kaser said. “We want to blur the lines between students and professional alumni.” With 9,000 square feet of exhibition space, the college will significantly increase the room it has to display faculty and student works. Currently, most exhibitions are shown in the college’s Hopkins Hall + Corridor Gallery, which encompasses about 1,500 square feet, or other locations scattered around campus. Now, more students can exhibit at the same time, in one location and for longer periods. “As we do in the Hopkins Hall + Corridor Gallery, we’ll have receptions to get them exposure and let people talk to them about their work,” Stevelt Kaser said. Students also will be able to work in the gallery to understand how it operates. And there are plans to provide students with rent-free office space in return for working in the gallery. But the OSU Urban Arts Space can and will be so much more as it officially opens Feb. 5. Other colleges and departments are welcome to use the space for such things as theater or musical performances, a place to teach classes or workshops (the Department of Folklore and the Wexner Center are both slated to do so) or to host lectures. “In some sense we become a satellite campus,” Stevelt Kaser said. Two advisory groups are helping the college determine the space’s use. One is a faculty/student group and the other is the Community Partners Group. Made up of community arts leaders and for-profit arts businesses, CPG will look at how the space can be used to connect with the community. One idea is to have programming every Friday night, such as local acts or visiting entertainers. The college wants to keep the OSU Urban Arts Space relevant year-round — something other universities’ similar ventures didn’t do before they eventually failed. “If you have exhibition space and only engage a limited audience, you won’t necessarily become a destination place,” said Karen Bell, dean of the College of the Arts. “So you have to bring in that rock band or jazz group and have people of all ages going there.” The below-ground space is located in the renovated Lazarus building, which also houses the Ohio Environmental Protection Agency and Jobs and Family Services. The college decided to create a space-within-a-space and dropped half the floor by 3 feet to give the place upper and lower galleries. Street-level windows allow passersby to look down into the lower gallery. “It really has a nice architectural flow,” Bell said. The idea for the OSU Urban Arts Space was conceived seven years ago, and other locations were considered, including the Arena District, the Short North and Gay Street. But city leaders approached OSU about using the Lazarus space, and it seemed a perfect fit. “We knew if we could get a large space for a reasonable price, it could be a dynamic drop of energy in fostering the revitalization of downtown and fostering the education of students,” said Bell, who added the college has a nine-year lease. “We’re at the center of all the performing arts locations and we’re going to get a lot of foot traffic once Town Street construction is finished in 2009.”
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