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Tuesday, March 19
The Indiana Daily Student

arts

Campus Art Collection features pieces in IU buildings

Art showcased at the IU Art Museum or the Grunwald Gallery of Art is not the only exhibited art on campus.

The IU Campus Art Collection aims to brighten spaces where students and faculty members meet, study or just hang out.

As the campus continues to expand with the addition of Hodge Hall to the Kelley School of Business and the development of the School of International and Global Studies, the space available to exhibit this collection also ?expands.

While many Hoosiers go about their daily schedules without noticing the art that adds to the space around them, the art exhibited is specifically chosen to serve the needs of that space.

The team of curators for IU’s Campus Art Collection organizes and distributes the pieces around campus. The majority of art found on campus belongs to this collection.

Pieces can be found in student spaces such as the Indiana Memorial Union and in office spaces such as the historic Von Lee building on Kirkwood Avenue where the IU communications department is housed.

IU departments from all campuses can work with the university’s campus art curators to add art to their space

“It’s a wonderful history of the world,” IU Campus Art Curator Sherry Rouse said. “When I talk to people and alumni who come back, they’re always like, ‘Oh, I remember this painting when I was a student.’ So they may have spent much of their time studying under it.”

IU owns a wide variety of artwork because of the University’s early start in collecting pieces. There is artwork that dates back to the late 1800s as well as recent pieces of art that have been inherited by the University from professors. They also obtain pieces from hired artists.

The process and upkeep of the countless pieces is not an easy task. Many of the paintings are in need of conservation or reframing, a task that comes with owning older pieces.

“In the old days when the union building was new and IU was a small campus the union board started collecting artwork,” Rouse said. “We have things that were made in the ’60s and ’70s. The college was founded in 1820, and we began collecting immediately.”

Rouse said her dream would be to have a spot for every piece of artwork, but the large amount in storage makes it difficult. However, there are always new opportunities to showcase pieces.

Once the business building opens this fall, Rouse said they are hoping to add some pieces to Hodge Hall.

“The business school will open this fall,” Rouse said. “They’re going to have students and faculty enter a photo contest. If anybody wants to send in a photo, they will combine them all and have a contest where the chosen ones are put on display.”

In the meantime, students can still walk around campus and view the already abundant collections on display and possibly get much more out of it than they anticipated.

“I like to think that students who are in an environment that is enhanced with artwork have a better exposure of what’s going on the in the art world,” Rouse said.

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