The University officially unveiled its plans Thursday to turn an old tobacco warehouse near East Campus into a multi-media facility for Duke arts.
The University officially unveiled its plans Thursday to turn an old tobacco warehouse near East Campus into a multi-media facility for Duke arts. At a champagne reception, giddy faculty and administrators surveyed the construction already underway and perused the blueprints of the new home for the creation of art and music.
The project involved meticulous faculty planning nearly unprecedented at the University. Professors even discussed where to put the light switches during the two-and-a-half years of development that went into the 17,000-square-foot arts center.
“They spent a lot of time figuring out how to put a $3 million project into a $1.8 million budget—and it’s going to come in at $2.1 million. But who’s counting?” Provost Peter Lange joked at the ceremony.
Faculty and administrators ascended a mound of gravel to peek in at the undeveloped space, which is scheduled to open in March. A grid of about 50 wooden columns still stand in the old tobacco storehouse. Architects had to work around the supports, which hampered their ability to create performance space when designing the project.
The other major challenge will be soundproofing the music rooms so that recording will be possible. The whistle on the nearby train is loud enough to rattle the boards on the windows next to the warehouse, and the noise interrupted conversation at the reception several times. Lighting the studio spaces will also pose difficulties as the brick building does not allow for additional windows.
But the obstacles have not diminished excitement about the latest addition to the University’s arts facilities. “Looking in you can just feel the energy,” said Richard Riddell, special assistant to the provost for the arts. “It’s going to be such a marvelous mixture of high tech spaces and very low tech experimental spaces.”
The arts center will include multi-media music rooms, an extensive printing and book-binding facility, digital art production space and art studios, as well as office space and a conference room. The second floor will also feature what developers called a semi-finished “impromptu art space” for temporary exhibits and performances.
Nearly all the music and visual art spaces have tie-ins to technology, and the building features a satellite of the Office of Information Technology.
Part of Duke’s goal was to integrate traditional art with innovative technology. “This is the humanities all surrendering to the fact that we can’t stay acoustic forever,” said Anthony Kelley, assistant professor of music.
The new space is part of what administrators and faculty are heralding as a renaissance of the arts at Duke. The warehouse, construction of the new Nasher Museum of Art and recent completion of theater facilities in the Bryan Center have buttressed the ideological commitment with space to carry it out. “It would be very difficult to match the kind of expectation that we’re currently assuming with the current facilities we have now,” said Anya Belkina, associate professor of the practice of art and art history.
As the University continues to develop its arts programs, it will look for innovative ways to connect the scattered facilities across campus, administrators said. The arts warehouse is set back from Campus Drive near the East Campus Bridge. The area between the building and the road will be re-landscaped to allow for better access, but the links between the Nasher, the Center for Documentary Studies and other arts facilities remain tenuous at best.
President Richard Brodhead explained that the upcoming challenge will be to make the arts “fit together in a way they don’t quite seem to do yet.”
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