UALR Receives $20M for New Visual Arts Building

UALR Chancellor Joel Anderson announces a $20.3 million gift from the Windgate Charitable Foundation to fund a new visual arts building on campus.

The University of Arkansas at Little Rock on Monday announced the second biggest gift ever made to the school, a $20.3 million grant from the Windgate Charitable Foundation of Siloam Springs that will fund a new 71,636-SF visual arts building on campus.

The building, expected to be open for classes by fall 2017, will be built on the north end of campus at the corner of 28th Street and Campus Drive East. It will consolidate UALR’s applied design, art history and studio arts programs.

Applied design is housed at University Plaza at the corner of University and Asher, while the art history and studio arts programs share the Fine Arts Building with UALR’s music programs. 

UALR has about 1,000 students enrolled in visual arts classes with 180 visual arts majors this semester. Sixteen full-time faculty members are devoted to visual arts programs.

The applied design and studio arts programs at UALR currently have 100 percent graduation rates, and the applied design program is the only one of its kind in the region, school officials said. 

The school will launch a master’s program in 3D studies beginning in the fall of 2016.

“This will be a transformational gift for the department and for the institution,” said UALR Chancellor Joel Anderson, who announced the gift Monday morning from the Stella Boyle Smith Concert Hall in the Fine Arts Building. “A gift of this magnitude will help already outstanding programs reach new levels of excellence. This building will be in all respects second to none.”

WER Architects of Little Rock worked with UALR on the design. UALR now will issue RFPs for a contractor and an architect firm to implement the design. The building will be designed to achieve a LEED Silver rating with the USGBC LEED system. 

Department chair Tom Chilton said the new facility will be a true “destination center” for visual arts students.

“This new facility will enable the department to to embrace traditional, contemporary and technological approaches to the visual arts in central Arkansas and provide opportunities for students throughout the South,” he said.

A $70,000 grant in 2012 from the Windgate Foundation funded a feasibility study that culminated in the designs for the new building revealed on Monday. The foundation began supporting the arts programs at UALR in 1995.