College digs in for new arts space

President Ellen McCulloch-Lovell celebrates the groundbreaking with special guests Charles and Sue Snyder, chairman Dean Nicyper, art faculty member Tim Segar, and Dan Cotter, director of plant operations, the only one without a hardhat or a coat.

A lively crowd gathered at the ceremonial groundbreaking for the college’s new Snyder Center for the Visual Arts, a 14,000-square-foot building that will be built adjacent to existing visual arts buildings. The groundbreaking and reception on December 5 kicked off a full weekend Winter Arts Festival that included open studios, demonstrations, dance recitals, a play, and a chamber music concert.

A quarter of all Marlboro students include visual arts as part of their Plan of Concentration. The goal of the visual arts center is to make classroom and studio spaces more integrated and healthy, and to allow for a more flexible pedagogy that integrates other disciplines.

“This arts facility will provide a new creative space for all, and will welcome faculty in other disciplines to use it, hold classes, display work, and collaborate with faculty in the arts,” says President Ellen McCulloch-Lovell. “It will support the college’s mission of intellectual and artistic creativity.”

The new building will provide a more concentrated space for the ceramics program, which is now spread between two buildings, and a digital media lab, which is currently housed in the library. By its 2015 completion, the visual arts center will also include classrooms, a gallery space, student studios, a sculpture studio, and a welding area.