The University of Vermont Foundation, which manages private support for the college, announced a donation Thursday that will create an integrated center for the creative arts.
Currently, creative arts disciplines such as theatre, dance, art, and television are spread out across the University of Vermont campus. College President Thomas Sullivan announced Thursday that will soon change. “Until now the University has lacked a dedicated location bringing together the fine, the visual and the performing arts. Today it is my great honor to announce the gift from Michele Cohen, class of 1972, and her husband Marty Cohen of New York City to create a truly integrated center for the creative arts on our campus. This extraordinary gift of $5 million from the Cohens will be used to completely transform the former Taft School to really become UVM’s first center for the integrated arts.”
College of Arts and Sciences Associate Dean Kelley Di Dio is a professor of Art History. She says the faculty made their first visit to the new building last week. “They call it a space for creative collision and that I think is a perfect way to put it. Spaces where music, dance, theatre, film and television studies and studio art will collaborate across their media.”
College of Arts and Sciences Dean Bill Falls believes the donation will raise the college’s profile in the arts. “Unlike the environment and health the arts are not yet widely recognized as a public face of UVM. This transformative gift will not only create a hub of collaboration and creativity; it will give us the opportunity we have been longing for, to rightly place the arts at the forefront of the college, as a public face of UVM commensurate with the quality of scholarship and teaching in the arts, and mirroring one of the essential qualities of Vermont: a commitment to strengthen the arts.”
Donor Michele Cohen told the crowd that art education allows students to think freely, create and tell stories, and it encourages curiosity. “It provides a perspective on the world that differs from the mainstream media. Now more than ever in an environment where our leaders do not treasure the arts it is imperative that we support artists and their programs.”
Sullivan and Cohen later noted that the gift will inspire generations of students. “It’s an opportunity to make sure that for generations and generations of students and faculty to come that we have the best possible opportunity to study, to learn from the great arts, broadly defined across the campus.”
Michele Cohen: “And it’s not just for the art students. It is for everybody on campus. For the engineers and the chemists and all of the people that will be in the STEM building. It’ll be a wonderful place for them to come and see what the other side of the brain can do.”
An architectural consulting firm has been hired to finalize the design and renovations of the old elementary school into the new integrated arts center.
An opening date has not been set.
