Libraries set to host museum’s art, events
LR center plans for renovations
Arkansas Arts Center officials will partner with the Central Arkansas Library System to display pieces from its art collection and host several regular programs during the 2½-year makeover of the Little Rock museum, officials said Wednesday.
Laine Harber, Arts Center interim executive director, said the deal is the first of multiple agreements that museum officials hope to strike with community organizations to keep a public presence during the $98.8 million overhaul of the MacArthur Park facility.
“We want to stay very visible while we’re under construction,” Harber said. “The Arts Center is by no means shutting down. We’re going to continue as much programming as possible. This is one huge step in making that happen.”
Construction is scheduled to begin in October.
About 150 pieces of artwork will be on display in 15 library locations, officials said.
Arrangements also have been made to continue several youth and adult
programs, including some arts school classes, at those sites. The deal also found a home for the popular annual “Young Arkansas Artists” exhibition of works from schoolchildren throughout the state.
The artwork will start going on display at libraries early next year, though the youth and adult programs won’t change locations until September, officials said.
“We’ve got creative teams on both sides of the table here, and we’re really accomplishing something special,” Harber said.
No money will change hands through the partnership, said Harber, who called it a “win-win.”
Most of the programs the Arts Center offers are free for patrons — and that won’t change — but maintaining a community presence will help solicit donations, Harber said.
“One of the really exciting things about this partnership — by doing these types of programs, that will continue our donor support,” Harber said.
“Various sponsors contribute to make these programs happen. That will be a revenue source that otherwise would have been in jeopardy.”
The arrangement, however, is not all-encompassing. Art pieces to be shown at the library branches are mostly three-dimensional works from the crafts collection, rather than the museum’s delicate collection of drawings.
Arrangements for the Arts Center children’s theater program are still up in the air, and the museum hasn’t finalized any agreements for where to put its art classes on three-dimensional media, such as pottery, which requires a kiln.
Nate Coulter, the library system’s executive director, said the arrangement will introduce Arts Center patrons to library offerings and vice versa, calling it “enlightened self-interest.” About 5,200 people visit the library and its branch locations each day, Coulter said.
“In some ways, there’s some overlap” between patrons of the two institutions, Coulter said. “[But] I think a large part of both groups may not have regular encounters with the other organization.”
Large wood and metal sculptures will be installed at the Main Library in the River Market District. Judy Onofrio’s Just Pretending, a collection of objects shaped into a mermaid sculpture, will reside at the Hillary Rodham Clinton Children’s Library & Learning Center on West 10th Street.
Other branches will house work based on themes related to their surroundings or the figures for which the libraries are named. The Adolphine Fletcher Terry Library, named after the social and political activist, will showcase work by female artists. Craft objects incorporating text will be installed at the John Gould Fletcher Library, named after the Pulitzer Prize-winning poet. The Terry branch is on Napa Valley Drive, the Fletcher branch on North Buchanan Street.
The preschool program Art Start, an existing collaboration between the museum and library system, also will move to the children’s library. Monthly, free lunchtime art discussions will relocate to the Main Branch. And Art Together, a partnership with Alzheimer’s Arkansas, will be held at the Butler Center for Arkansas Studies, also located in the River Market District.
Various museum school classes for two-dimensional media will be hosted at the Main Branch, as well as branches in southwest Little Rock, west Little Rock and Maumelle.
Harber previously announced that the reconstruction project forced the cancellation of Tabriz, the Arts Center’s major biennial fundraiser scheduled for April, because staff members will be too busy preparing for the groundbreaking.
Construction is scheduled to start in October, and the redone museum would reopen in early 2022, according to the current timeline. Architects are working on a detailed design after revealing a high-level mock-up in February.
Little Rock on Nov. 5 sold $31.2 million in hotel-tax revenue bonds for the project, enough to cover less than a third of the projected cost, which is subject to change. The nonprofit Arkansas Arts Center Foundation will be raising the tens of millions of additional dollars needed to pay for the overhaul.