New Visual Arts Center Announced as 2017 Fund A Need

The St. Margaret’s visual arts program is an integral part of the curriculum that nurtures students’ hearts and minds in unique and important ways. Visual arts study ignites passion, creativity, critical thinking, personal expression, and provides students space for exploration, adaption, invention and introspection.

 

Visual arts has long been a part of St. Margaret’s history, and is a thriving program today with students exploring materials and media as young as 3 in the Preschool, and excelling at the highest levels of art practice in studio art and 2D design, sculpture, pottery, 3D design, photography, digital media and filmmaking by Upper School. The program continues to grow and succeed. This year, St. Margaret’s had the highest achievement in the Scholastic Art & Writing Awards, surpassing all other Orange County schools with 94 visual art honors.

 

The importance of visual arts is well established, yet it remains a bit of a hidden gem at St. Margaret’s with classrooms disparately positioned around campus in tight, inadequate facilities, inconspicuous locations, and artwork emerging a few times a year in public art shows.

 

St. Margaret’s has a quality of excellence in everything it does, beginning with curriculum and faculty and continuing to outstanding facilities and resources to support student programs. Importantly, every student who commits his or her time and talents to study any subject or discipline here should expect the same experience in program quality. It is time to demonstrate the value St. Margaret’s places on the visual arts as an integral component of our liberal arts curriculum, and to deliver the level of excellence to our students and faculty, through specially designed and expanded facilities and resources that provide new opportunities and access to visual arts.

 

The campus master plan designates the visual arts to be located at the east side of the Highland Quad, the central campus corridor for all students. Housed above the Library on the second floor of the Gateway Building, the new 6,000-square-foot visual arts center will feature a central hall and five new dedicated visual arts studios for all kindergarten – grade 12 classes. The envisioned spaces have been designed with the visual arts faculty to meet the needs of the program today and allow for expansion of the program in the future.

 

A new visual arts center provides a home for students and faculty, bringing them together in a comfortable and dedicated space for the first time in the history of the school—a place for creativity, expression, inspiration, idea sharing, and celebration and camaraderie around the visual arts.

 

Faculty members imagine new levels of student and faculty collaboration and exposure to others’ ideas and work, older students mentoring younger students, and providing shared inspiration across disciplines and cross-pollination of ideas and creativity. Importantly, this project recognizes and validates their work and importance within our broad and deep academic program.

 

Bringing the visual arts together in one central facility also allows for the imagining and creation of multi-disciplinary and mixed media courses, the sharing of large-scale industrial equipment, and permanent display spaces for K-12 artwork.