Revisiting entries: Should community culture master plans include elements on higher education arts programs?
This article was published in 2016, "Should community culture master plans include elements on higher education arts programs?," and the next year there was a brief follow up on the for profit arts school sector. Both sectors should be included in such plans if relevant.
The article made the point that community cultural plans should have an element on higher education if they have small/independent arts colleges, to be prepared if economic and other circumstances change significantly for those organizations. In DC, the fulcrum was the independent Corcoran Gallery of Arts and its related College of Arts and Design.
It wasn't until some time after its dissolution that I figured out what would have been the best course--not giving its property to GWU and art to the National Gallery of Arts but to reposition as a locally serving fine arts museum and shifting the college to the University of the District of Columbia.
The piece reads great 8 years later!
The academy’s educational transition website states that there was no “single reason for the decision to wind down degree-granting programmes”, but rather several “converging trends” that led to the downsizing. Principal among the trends listed on the site are “[i]ncreasing expectations from students, prospective students and the families that college should provide a broader range of academic and professional opportunities beyond the fine arts”. This sentiment is echoed in Pryor’s statement that “universities in our own region and across the country are struggling with these trends”, with PAFA representing a particularly vulnerable example in a national arts education sector facing serious headwinds.Beyond the challenges of attracting and satisfying students, PAFA cited the difficulty of providing adequate services and complying with regulations for a relatively small school, noting that “it is simply impossible to maintain a college—with admissions, enrollment, Title IX, student support services and other requirements—with a student body of less than 300”. The school noted that these difficulties were only exacerbated by the pandemic, leading to even more pronounced challenges in enrollment and operating costs.
Likely this is a problem for other small arts schools.
Now, UAS's properties are being sold off, and the bankruptcy trustee isn't inclined to keep the properties as arts uses, so potential arts-related bidders compete ("Lead bidder for UArts’ Hamilton Hall plans art gallery, work space for artists, and restaurant"), unequally, with for profit developers ("Mayor Parker can help keep the arts in the Avenue of the Arts — if she acts quickly," Philadelphia Inquirer).
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Philadelphia has a strong philanthropic community still, in particular the Pew Foundation, and if the city had been prepared wrt arts planning in the higher education sector, perhaps these institutions could have been saved, and/or the building portfolio remained in the arts sector.
A great example of this happening was in Detroit, when the Kresge Foundation stepped up to save the Detroit Institute of Arts in the face of the City's bankruptcy. It turns out that the DIA was run as an agency of the city, so its collection and assets weren't separately protected and were in danger of being sold off ("Foundations Commit $330 Million to Protect DIA Collection," Philanthropy News Digest).
Apparently, UAS enrollment had dropped by more than half since 2009. If that's not an indicator for a need for extraordinary intervention, I don't know what is.
Art facilities portfolios. In "Reprinting with a slight update, "Arts, culture districts and revitalization" from 2009" (2019), I recommend that such properties be owned and managed by arts-related community development corporations. These articles provide some additional examples ("BTMFBA -- London edition (2025), "From BTMFBA to "community right to buy"" (2024)).
A community right to buy codicil is what they need in Philadelphia.
Hard to make difficult decisions without a plan. But getting the Mayor involved is a long shot. She has to be convinced. And without an organized plan it's hard to get elected officials to act let alone act with the alacrity necessary to save a school ("The long, slow death of Birmingham-Southern: What killed an Alabama college with 168-year-old roots?," Birmingham News) or a building portfolio.
Write those elements in community cultural resources master plans.
Labels: arts-based revitalization, arts-culture, cultural planning, design, higher education
posted by Richard Layman @ 4:13 PM&Permanent Link
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UArts’ Hamilton Hall will go to the Philly company that repurposed the Bok Building
https://www.inquirer.com/education/university-arts-philadelphia-hamilton-hall-bok-scout-20250224.html
Seattle University will acquire Cornish College of the Arts
https://www.seattletimes.com/entertainment/visual-arts/seattle-university-will-acquire-cornish-college-of-the-arts
3/18/25
While officials presented the move — which comes amid a larger trend of consolidation in higher learning — as a way to ensure Cornish’s future, it has created uncertainty and anxiety for Cornish staff and faculty, who will all be laid off at the end of May.
Some will be rehired by Seattle U while others will receive severance packages, but it’s currently unclear what total staff reductions will look like.
“This is … ensuring Cornish is around for the next 100 years,” she said.
For Seattle U, which offers some art degrees but doesn’t have a dedicated art school covering as many disciplines as Cornish, the deal presents a chance to enhance its arts education and interdisciplinary learning, said Seattle University President Eduardo Peñalver, calling it a “generational opportunity.”
Upon closing of the transaction on May 31 — the end of Cornish’s fiscal year — Cornish will transfer its programs and assets to Seattle U and close as a nonprofit and degree-granting institution. This means Cornish’s 40 full-time faculty members and 87 staff members will be laid off, though Seattle U said it “intends to hire some Cornish faculty and staff.” (Cornish’s adjunct faculty is hired on a per-semester basis.)
Seattle U’s Peñalver said they opted for an asset contribution rather than a merger because it was quicker, more certain and simpler, largely because it bypasses labor-intensive approval steps with federal regulators. Plus, he added, it allows Cornish faculty and students to more quickly take advantage of the perks of a much larger institution, like counseling, wellness and health support, and athletic and recreational activities and facilities.
Though some Cornish faculty members said they were excited about these potential perks, as well as higher salaries and a major, masterpiece-studded museum that’s being planned for Seattle U’s growing campus, faculty and staff will anxiously await news about their jobs, departments, tenure tracks and curricula in the coming weeks. Working groups of employees from both institutions will make recommendations about merging student services, curricula, human resources and more.
https://www.inquirer.com/arts/peter-paone-artist-michener-woodmere-museum-20251114.html
A South Philly teen broke into the Barnes Foundation 73 years ago. It led to a lifelong artistic career.
“I don’t think I could have had the career that I had outside of Philadelphia, I think, because of the art schools, because of the life I had in Philadelphia, and the collectors, and the Philadelphia Art Museum,” he said.
Temple plans to fill the gap left by UArts with their new Center City campus
https://www.inquirer.com/education/temple-university-new-campus-terra-hall-uarts-center-city-20251112.html
Temple intends to make the building its new Center City campus, giving the North Philadelphia-based university a prime location on the Avenue of the Arts. The move furthers Temple president John Fry’s vision to partner even more with the city’s cultural organizations, including the Philadelphia Orchestra — about 30 members of the orchestra already teach at Temple — and Ensemble Arts, and open the school for more community events.
“People think about medicine and Fox [School of Business] and Beasley [School of Law] and all the things Temple does on that side,” Fry said, “but Temple has been an arts organization for almost 120 years, and we have made a profound contribution to the arts across the spectrum. This is going to be very visible in Center City going forward. Temple really is stepping things up and moving into that space.”
The university will renovate the space and plans to move some art and music programs there, in addition to programs and offices currently housed at its leased Center City campus at 1515 Market St. The building will reopen in fall 2027 with about 2,500 credit students and some non-credit students taking classes there, Temple officials said.
Fry sees Terra Hall as the main anchor at one end of what he’s calling an innovation corridor that would stretch past Temple’s main campus to its health sciences campus farther north on Broad Street. The university also is proposing to merge with the Library Company of Philadelphia on Locust Street, which has 500,000 rare books, manuscripts, prints, photographs, works of art, ephemera, and other objects spanning the 17th through 19th centuries.
Temple officials during a tour Monday showed off the building’s many arts spaces, including a black box theater, dance studios, recording studios, soundproofed practice rooms, space for a virtual reality lab, and a 160-seat auditorium that can be used for film screenings and performances.
She noted that studying in Center City amid its distinctive architecture is another plus. Tyler also this fall began leasing space at the Pennsylvania Academy of Fine Arts, giving art students new academic offerings and access to PAFA’s sweeping collection of American art, while providing precious studio space for recent Temple MFA grads.
Stroker said music students will take advantage of the recording studios and soundproof practice rooms. One of the college’s fastest-growing majors is music technology, now enrolling more than 200 students, he said.
https://www.inquirer.com/arts/temple-university-pennsylvania-academy-of-the-fine-arts-20251001.html
Temple University stakes out a Center City outpost at PAFA. Is there more to come?
Temple will now be "in a whole new tier with public universities that have relationships with world-class museums," one leader said.
Temple University is staking out a presence at the Pennsylvania Academy of the Fine Arts, giving its art students new academic offerings and access to PAFA’s sweeping collection of American art, while providing precious studio space for recent Temple MFA grads.
The arrangement comes through a new partnership that leaders say will achieve a number of goals for both institutions.
PAFA will lease space to Temple on the 10th floor of its Samuel M.V. Hamilton Building, bringing the financially struggling academy much-needed revenue. Temple sees the affiliation as a way to expand programs and raise the standing of its Tyler School of Art and Architecture.
“Tyler is a great school for art and architecture and our relationship with PAFA really bolsters our reputation from an academic perspective,” said Temple president John A. Fry.
Tyler dean Susan E. Cahan called the new partnership a “game-changer for Tyler.” Temple has contemporary art galleries and libraries, but no art museum, and “Temple University and Tyler specifically will now have an official affiliation with the first museum and school in the country and one of the best museums in the country,” she said. “We believe it will put us in a whole new tier with public universities that have relationships with world-class museums.”
Donald R. Caldwell, chair of PAFA’s trustees, said of a potential merger:
“We’re not opposed to it, but that was not the intention of the original agreement.”
Right now, Caldwell said, PAFA is continuing along the track it’s been on for more than a year — trying to bring in revenue with a new education program after eliminating college degrees, renovating its historically significant Frank Furness-George Hewitt-designed building at Broad and Cherry Streets, and raising money.
Temple will undertake renovations to the 23,000-square-foot 10th floor in the Hamilton Building, creating subsidized studio spaces for up to 15 post-MFA students who will also have access to PAFA’s considerable art-making equipment on other floors — in printmaking, paper-making, and the foundry. Offering studio space is seen as a way of supporting artist graduates “who we’d like to incentivize to stay in Philadelphia,” Cahan said.
The building will be home to a new curatorial studies certificate program Temple, giving those students “access to the PAFA collection on view and in storage, and the opportunity to create exhibitions from the collection,” she said.
https://www.inquirer.com/arts/temple-university-pennsylvania-academy-of-the-fine-arts-20251001.html
Temple University stakes out a Center City outpost at PAFA. Is there more to come?
The new relationship will establish a program of internships at PAFA for students in Temple’s arts management track program. And a new critic-in-residence program will bring to Philadelphia a visiting art critic whose presence is intended to spur artistic dialogues within the city, and “to shine light on Philadelphia’s cultural life on a national stage,” Cahan said.
https://www.inquirer.com/opinion/commentary/library-company-temple-university-merger-ben-franklin--20251113.html
Why the Library Company’s future belongs with Temple University
Since 1988, I’ve had the privilege of being a research fellow and shareholder of one of Philadelphia’s quiet marvels: the Library Company of Philadelphia. It began as a bold experiment — an effort by tradesmen and thinkers to share books and ideas for the common good.
Nearly three centuries later, that spirit of shared knowledge still animates the place. To a casual visitor, the Library Company might feel like a time capsule — shelves of rare books, manuscripts, and prints stretching back to the colonial era.
But those who know it best understand that it’s alive.
But running a major research library today requires more than devotion. It requires modern infrastructure, technology, and the reach of a larger educational ecosystem. It requires sustained financial support, something with which it has struggled in recent years. Without alumni or tuition revenue, and as National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship programs have ended, the Library Company faces serious financial headwinds.
That is why the proposed partnership with Temple makes sense. Temple’s president, John Fry, will lead a $25 million fundraising effort as part of the university’s next capital campaign — timed to the Library Company’s 300th anniversary and Temple’s own 150th. He has pledged that the Library Company’s distinctive scholarly culture will remain intact. Within Temple’s library system — but from its location on Locust Street — the Library Company will retain its curatorial leadership, its fellowship programs, and its identity.
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https://www.inquirer.com/news/philadelphia/temple-university-library-company-merger-20251017.html
Temple University-Library Company of Philadelphia merger moves ahead to next steps
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