Student Artists Lack Gallery Space

The dearth of gallery space has ranked among the major complaints about Harvard’s arts scene for student artists and Visual and Environmental Studies concentrators, who are seeking alternate spaces on campus to showcase their art.

Students are not completely without options of display venues: art can be showcased in places such as Mather House, Adams House, and the Center for Government and International Studies. But none of these areas was technically designed with the explicit purpose of displaying art.

“There is not enough exhibition space on campus. It’s absurd!” said Julia A.F. Rooney ’11, a VES concentrator pursuing a senior thesis in painting. “There are no student spaces where work can be exhibited in a serious way.”

Julia V. Guren ’10, co-director of the Harvard Student Art Show, said that she would like to see “larger-scale” gallery and studio art spaces to accommodate high demand among students. Guren, who is involved in organizing “Arts First,” has been working with the Office of the Arts at Harvard to find a suitable solution for the upcoming show.

“What I’d like to tell you is that the OFA is creating a beautiful new gallery,” said Jack Megan, head of OFA. “But until the funds are made available for that, we’re looking for temporary solutions.”

The lack of gallery space has not only affected students’ ability to showcase their works, but has also impacted the sense of community among visual artists on campus.

The departure of painting lecturer Nancy Mitchnik last spring and the fleeting presence of visiting professors in the VES department have contributed to the lack of cohesion within the studio art community at Harvard, said Scott J. Roben ’12, a VES concentrator specializing in studio painting.

A student-run gallery could serve as a central meeting space for VES students, said Roben—who, along with Rooney, is in the process of exploring the possibility of creating such a central space.

Megan said that just as the performance arts are supported by their theater spaces, a student-run gallery for visual artists would foster “a sense of community among these students, a place for these ideas, a place to feel supported and to be constructively criticized.”

“A fundamental thing that strikes me is that the performing arts at Harvard are almost unmissable,” he said. “We don’t have any kind of equivalent space whose very presence is a statement about the importance of studio artwork in the experience of undergraduates.”

—Staff writer James K. McAuley can be reached at mcauley@fas.harvard.edu.

—Staff writer Julia L. Ryan can be reached at jryan@college.harvard.edu.