A pair of consultants are at the University of Wyoming this week to gather perspectives on the future of public art on campus.
Commissioned by UW and funded largely by student government, the consultants are planning to weave together a campus art plan that will lay out how the university acquires art, where it should look to add art and how it can best engage non-artist members of the community in those goals.
Hosting “idea swaps” with community members during their current campus visit, the consultants — Renee Piechocki and Jennifer McGregor — said students especially were engaged and interested by improving campus.
“There’s a real desire to … continue the tradition of making this campus meaningful and beautiful,” Piechocki said. “And they really see public art as a way to connect people to the university and to really keep falling in love with the campus.”
She added she was grateful for the support, best exemplified by ASUW’s support for the campus art plan. ASUW put up $60,000 of the $72,000 cost of the plan and Piechocki said a sit-down with a handful of student senators revealed many were hoping to foster improvements that would likely not go into effect until after they graduated.
“They all said, ‘We want to do something really special for the campus that is going to be remembered,’” she said. “This is a system — it’s a seed that is going to fruit later, and so I really appreciated their foresight. It made me very hopeful for the future in general.”
But students are not the only ones interested in campus public art and — because UW is such a large part of Laramie — the consultants said they hope to include even those off-campus.
“When you’re in a university town, there’s so many alumni and current students and faculty and staff who live in Laramie, so they’re part of the campus community, but also part of the city as a whole,” Piechocki said.
Piechocki and McGregor are no strangers to Laramie — they helped develop the Laramie Public Art Plan approved by the Laramie City Council in 2015. The campus plan currently under development will address UW specifically, but seek to fit into the wider Laramie community.
The consultants toured the campus in September, but were already familiar with some of the art on campus from their work on the Laramie plan.
“We spent a considerable amount of time touring the campus,” McGregor said. “We saw the library, which is filled with wonderful student art, we came here to the (Visual Arts) Building, we went to the Gateway Center, got to see all the art there.”
The consultants will draw on their knowledge of campus and the input they receive this week to develop a plan alongside the UW President’s Public Art Committee.
“Between now and when we finalize the plan, we’ll be having work sessions with the public art committee,” McGregor said. “We have regular weekly calls with them, and so each work session will tackle a different part of the plan. It’s not like we just go home and write this. We write it and continually weave in the feedback that we get.”
The plan is scheduled to go before the UW Board of Trustees for approval in June.
Piechocki and McGregor plan to host two more idea swaps today — one for faculty and staff from noon-1 p.m. and another open to all members of the community from 4-6 p.m. The first presentation takes place in room 129 of the College of Business Building, while the community presentation takes place in room 506 of Coe Library.
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