The Arts at the University of Virginia is dedicated to building on innovative research and fostering inspired expression that equips us for the future.
In the Spring of 1988, the Board of Visitors raised the Student Comprehensive Fee $1 per full-time student per semester. With the fund created by this fee, the Arts Board of the University of Virginia presents an outstanding artist, attraction, performance, or exhibition each year in a three-year rotation which includes music, visual arts, and drama. The Arts Board program was created to raise students' awareness of and appreciation for the arts.
Event proposals are presented by the respective department (Music, Studio Art/Art Museum, or Drama) and voted on by the student members of the Arts Board. The Arts Board is responsible for selecting the program. The Arts Board is responsible for planning and implementing the details of the program and for overseeing the Arts Board budget, under the advice and guidance of the Arts Board advisors.
General Information
The Arts Board project has a three year rotation: Music, Visual Arts and Drama.
Music in 2010-11
Visual Arts in 2011-12 (planning to begin in 2010-2011)
Drama in 2012-13 (planning to begin in 2011-2012)
The presenting department can either propose at least three projects to the Board for decision or can choose to allow the Board to come up with the project ideas as well as select the project.
If the department chooses to make the proposals, they are generally artists who would further the goals of the department while fitting within the intended purpose of the program: accessibility, residency, and ability to work together with and engage students.
Once proposals are made (whether by the department or developed by the Board), the Board determines the best project based on accessibility (connection to students across Grounds), availability of the artist(s), artist ability to relate to and work with students and focuses on a residency rather than a single performance.
A collaboration between The Cardboard Company and New York artist Tom Burckhardt, “The Brooks Natural History Museum C. 1900: A Creative Interpretation,” opened at Ruffin Gallery on February 24. The installation is a whimsical re-imagination of UVA’s defunct natural history museum, which occupied Brooks Hall from 1877 through the 1940s, constructed of brown cardboard (60 percent recycled), black paint, and the creativity of the collaborators. Burckhardt, the 2011-12 visiting artist chosen by the student-run UVA Arts Board, made the show’s centerpiece, a very sympathetic mammoth being led by Henry Ward, the natural history entrepreneur whose company made the original plaster and fur version for the Brooks Natural History Museum.
The show is right up my alley. Bursting with energy, it’s imaginative, original, and just plain fun. I loved the handmade quality, which is fresh and authentic. Upon entering Ruffin Hall, you are greeted by The Cardboard Company’s version of Brooks Hall’s façade spilling out of the gallery space that’s marvelously re-created in extreme perspective.
A wandering woolly mammoth trudges its way across the McCormick Road crosswalk and takes up residence in the University of Virginia's Clark Hall. This creature is the centerpiece in a new Ruffin Gallery exhibit that reinterprets a piece of University history – using only black paint and cardboard.
A group of 12 studio art students from the College of Arts & Sciences known as "The Cardboard Company" having been working with New York artist Tom Burckhardt to construct an artistic interpretation of the Brooks Hall Natural History Museum circa 1900. The museum, which opened in the Victorian Gothic building just east of the Rotunda on University Avenue in 1877 and ceased functioning as a museum in the 1940s, was one of the most impressive and innovative museums of natural history in the nation, complete with a replica of a woolly mammoth on permanent display.
The student-run University of Virginia Arts Board has selected New York visual artist Tom Burckhardt as this year's visiting artist.
Each year, the board selects an outstanding artist, attraction, performance or exhibition to visit the Grounds and work closely with the arts community. The selection rotates among music, the visual arts and drama.
Reproduction, including downloading of ARS works is prohibited by copyright laws and international conventions without the express written permission of Artists Rights Society (ARS), New York.
