For Immediate Release May 10, 2005

For More Information Contact: Julie Schaefer, 317-920-2413 Rich Schneider, 317-278-4564 rcschnei@iupui.edu

Grand Opening Celebration Set for New Home of Herron School of Art and Design

INDIANAPOLIS - In the abstract, 170,000 square feet seems like a lot. In reality, it's even more.

When you're standing in the middle of a 170,000-square-foot building, it surrounds you like some vast stretch of open land. That's precisely what Valerie Eickmeier likes about it.

Strolling through the sprawling structure that's the new home of the Herron School of Art and Design on the IUPUI campus, Eickmeier smiles the smile of someone who has accomplished something grand.

A dedication ceremony and opening celebration of Herron's new home, Eskenazi Hall, located on the campus of IUPUI at 735 West New York Street, will be held June 3, 2005. The building dedication ceremony begins at 3:00 p.m., followed by the grand opening celebration at 4:30 p.m. Both events are free and open to the public.

As Herron's dean, Eickmeier has led the effort to turn a long-held dream into a 170,000-square-foot, state-of-the-art facility designed specifically for art students, faculty, and the community. Those efforts included not only overseeing the complex design and construction phases of the project, but also heading up a capital campaign to raise more than $16 million to help fund it.

The new facility is named Sidney and Lois Eskenazi Hall in honor of the couple that made a significant lead gift to the campaign. The amount of space at 735 W. New York street is triple the amount currently available in Herron's facilities at 16 th and Pennsylvania streets.

The building contains significantly expanded classroom and studio spaces, as well as the first-ever individual faculty offices. The new building also includes a 240-seat tiered auditorium for instructional use and public programs, 5,000 square feet of studio space for graduate students, four galleries, the 8,000-square-foot Ruth Lilly Art Library, and a Grand Hall for public receptions and events.

"This exceptional facility exceeds our expectations," says Eickmeier of the $26.5-million project.

That's saying a lot, since expectations for a new Herron facility began mounting almost from the day that the art school became part of Indiana University in 1967. Currently housed in a trio of buildings at 1701 N. Pennsylvania St. , plus three other leased properties, none of which are adequate to meet the needs of its 850 students and 68 faculty, Herron has been in need of improved facilities for decades.

So a few years ago when IUPUI officials offered the IU School of Law building - which was going to be vacated when the law school moved to a new building in 2002 - to Herron, the art school's administration and faculty thought it was a workable plan. It wasn't a perfect fit: the law school building's ceilings were too low, walls would have to be removed and spaces re-configured, and a new wing would have to be built to accommodate the school's space requirements and the galleries.

But at least it was a place to start planning in earnest for Herron's move to the campus, said Eickmeier.

It came with a caveat, however. Along with the promise of the old law school building, Herron received $12 million in funding allocations over the course of two state legislative sessions. Any additional money the project required would have to be raised independently.

Early estimates for renovating the law school indicated that Herron would have to raise at least another $12 million. Yet a study done in anticipation of a capital campaign predicted that, at best, the art school would be able to raise about $5 million.

That didn't deter Eickmeier. From the moment she was appointed Herron's dean in 1999, she made funding, planning and construction of the new facility her top priorities. She lobbied potential donors for support, held receptions, gave presentations, attended meetings, developed grant proposals - in short, she did whatever it took to raise the funds for the kind of building she felt Herron deserved. Her efforts paid off.

"So far," says Eickmeier proudly, "we've raised more than three times what that study said we could." She knew that Herron had an important history, and was a tremendous asset to the campus and community, but she felt the school's fundraising potential had been underestimated.

To date, Herron has successfully raised $17.5 million, leaving another $2.5 million yet to be secured. Eickmeier points out that there are several prominent naming opportunities still available.

The Herron Sculpture & Ceramics Building

Out of the state's initial $12 million, Herron spent $3 million to build a separate facility for its sculpture and ceramics programs. Located on the north side of the IUPUI campus at 1350 N. Stadium Drive , the 26,000-square-foot structure was built in response to the realization that the sculpture and ceramics programs weren't going to fit comfortably into the revamped law school.

What's more, the facilities those programs had been using for several years were literally on the verge of collapse. So Herron hired Indianapolis-based Blackburn Architects, Inc. to design a magnificent new Sculpture & Ceramics Building . It opened to students in January 2000.

The result of the move, says Mark Richardson, associate professor of ceramics, , has been an increase in enrollment and has raised standards for students. There is a higher level of commitment to research and creative activity. Not to mention a dramatic shift in teaching and working environments.

"At the old building, it was like working in your basement," says Richardson . "All our classes took place in one room. I felt more like a traffic cop than an instructor because I had to keep everyone moving."

After four years in the Sculpture and Ceramics Building , Richardson says he's still euphoric. He credits much of the success of the facility to the fact that the architects consulted the ceramics faculty about what they needed. "This is really a facility designed to have the optimum flow for ceramics."

Greg Hull, assistant professor of sculpture, says the same thing happened with the design of the sculpture portion of the building. Previously housed in a former muffler shop with low ceilings, the program now occupies a building in which the ceilings soar 30 feet in the air.

Sculpture enrollments have followed suit, tripling in the past four years. At the same time, says Hull, students can stretch their creative limits, because they now have the space and the equipment to try out their ideas.

"Here we have an overhead crane and a forklift, which we didn't have before," says Hull. "We also have computers that allow students to do their design work and modeling before they begin working on projects."

Just as importantly, they have a safe environment in which to work. In every regard, from equipment safeguards to proper building ventilation, the present facility is designed for maximum safety, something Hull says wasn't true about sculpture's former home.

Feeling safe encourages creativity, says Hull . "It's a fantastic facility that's set up better than any other university sculpture program I have seen."

Eskenazi Hall

The success of the Sculpture and Ceramics Building set a standard that Eickmeier wanted Eskenazi Hall to match.

That was what Jonathan Hess set out to do. A partner in the Indianapolis-based architectural firm Browning Day Mullins Dierdorf, Inc. (BDMD), Hess was the lead architect on the Herron project.

While it was his first art school project, it was not his first visual arts institution. Hess has designed the Eiteljorg Museum of American Indian and Western Art, which is within easy walking distance of the new Herron building; he also headed the design team that created expanded new facilities for the Indianapolis Museum of Art.

For Herron, Hess wanted to create a structure that would operate as efficiently and as effectively as possible while making an architectural statement that this was IUPUI's art and design school. The first step in that process was to determine what that would entail.

Over the course of several months, Hess and Eickmeier visited art schools around the country. The goal, says Hess, was to understand what worked and what didn't in other settings.

"We saw things that showed us how little thought had gone into some designs," says Hess. "One place we visited had the printmaking studio right above the gallery, which meant that there were acid traps in the ceiling over the gallery. We definitely wanted to avoid major mistakes like that."

While visiting other institutions was helpful, Hess credits Herron faculty and staff with really helping his design team understand how to make the new building work. It was during a series of meetings both before design work began and as it progressed that the final structural concepts were hammered out.

The process started with dreaming aloud, says Eickmeier. "We started by asking each program to give us its dream scenario. Everybody talked about the ideal type of space they'd like to have for their programs."

For Robert Eagerton, who recently retired from Herron after more than 35 years as a professor of printmaking and painting, that process was all too familiar. Over the course of his career, Eagerton sat on numerous committees charged with planning a new facility for Herron on the IUPUI campus. None of those projects ever made it past the committee stage - until Eickmeier became dean and vowed to move the process along.

"We were encouraged to go for what we really wanted rather than scale down our expectations," says Eagerton. "Valerie always said that whatever we came up with, she would work to get the money for it. And she was true to her word."

The blue-sky concepts that the Herron faculty members came up with became the foundation for realistic planning. David Long was Hess' point man during the faculty meetings. Long and the BDMD team developed plans based on what Herron faculty members had defined as ideal circumstances for the school's various programs.

"We actually went through the process with the faculty twice," says Long. "Once before we started designing anything, then again when we had our preliminary designs done."

Even then the process wasn't over. With input from IU's architectural office and interior designers, as well as the limitations imposed by budgetary restrictions, Long says the building's design was tweaked as the project progressed.

Finally, when Eickmeier had raised two-thirds of the $17.5 million in private funds necessary for the project, she received a green light from university officials to begin construction. On September 13, 2002, a groundbreaking ceremony on the IUPUI campus marked the formal beginning of the new Herron School of Art and Design.

The result is a building that combines contemporary elegance with the rawness of an industrial building. It's a place of sealed concrete floors and 14-foot-high ceilings criss-crossed by steel beams and painted ductwork; of well-lighted studios designed for painters, printmakers, photographers, and furniture-makers; of classrooms equipped to train future art historians and educators.

It's also a building filled with practicalities - air-conditioning, for one, which will allow Herron to hold summer classes on site, something it has not been able to do in its current un-air-conditioned facilities. And proper ventilation for all of the studios. And decent lighting, ample electrical systems and plenty of computers. And wide doorways and hallways, along with a loading dock, to permit artworks to be easily moved into and out of the building. And lots and lots of open wall space in the hallways to encourage students to display their work.

For Linda Adele Goodine, professor of photography, it's a place she can finally call home. Throughout her 15 years on the faculty, Goodine has been teaching her classes in off-site facilities because there was no place to house photography classes on the 16 th and Pennsylvania campus.

"For us, this is going to be an expansive move in terms of being able to collaborate with the rest of the school," says Goodine. "We're also going to have a new state-of-the-art shooting studio, which will help us develop the program more fully."

Goodine says she'll be able to do things like cover the use of lighting for everything from commercial work to fine art photography, and expand into doing time-based video projects. "Because this new facility is so big," she says, "everyone can think big."

It's a building designed to inspire the people who use it, says Hess. "I thought we'd be really fortunate if we could make a building that was a good palette that the students and faculty could use to explore their own creativity."

Mission accomplished. "This building is anticipated to be one of the top teaching facilities in the nation. It will put Herron among the most premier schools of art and design," says Eickmeier. "Additionally, it will allow us to better serve the public through expanded community arts programs."

Then she pauses and looks around the building one more time. "To build something like this comes along once in a lifetime," she says. "I'm glad we seized the moment and did it right." ###