Heading on home
College of Art leaving S. Main to combine campus
Five years after purchasing and transforming a South Main building into a graduate school and gallery, the Memphis College of Art is retreating from Downtown to consolidate its facilities around its Overton Park base.
The college’s ambitious plan to expand its “footprint” to Downtown with the Nesin Graduate School, at 477 S. Main, proved alienating to some graduate students and cumbersome to faculty, officials said. The expected benefits of being part of a burgeoning South Main arts district failed to make up for the lack of access to art-making apparatus — wood shops, a metal shop, ceramics and printmaking equipment — available at distinctive Rust Hall, the 1959 building in Overton Park that is the base of operations for the 79-year-old private independent school of art and design.
“It’s a beautiful building, the gallery is to die for, but the students are pretty isolated,” said associate professor Haley Morris-Cafiero, 39, head of the college’s Master of Fine Arts photography program. “The graduate students are encouraged to be leaders, but it’s hard for the undergrads to benefit from their experience and their art when they’re way across town.”
To make up for the loss of the Downtown studio space, five Midtown homes on North Tucker that currently function as student housing would be converted into studios for MCA’s 30-plus graduate students, assuming the structures can be rezoned from “residential” to “campus” use. The cost of the rehab is projected at $552,000. MCA also owns a home on North Rembert that already has been rezoned as “campus” space.
With the future of its Downtown building in flux, the College of Art is seeking public input. Hosted by Artspace Consulting, three public meetings will be held this month (at 5:30 p.m. on Sept. 16 and 8:30 a.m. and 12:30 p.m. on Sept. 17) to invite artists, Downtown residents, business owners and others to suggest possible uses for the property, which the college intends to sell or lease.
MCA hopes to implement all changes by the start of the 2016 school year.
Opened to much fanfare in October 2010, the five-story Nesin Graduate School — named for Dr. Jeffrey D. Nesin, MCA president from 1991 to 2009 — is home to the first-floor Hyde Gallery; two floors of graduate student studios and classrooms; and two upper floors operated as rental property for tenants. (The basement also houses grad-student space.)
The building was purchased in 2010 from the old Lewis Supply Co., and the college invested $2.5 million in its renovation.
Dr. Ron Jones, MCA president, said consolidating the campus would help make the Memphis College of Art a more attractive “choice college” for prospective students, as recommended by a “strategic plan” for growth recently completed for the college by Memphis-based Southern Growth Studio. The college currently has about 435 students, plus 26 full-time faculty members and 40 adjunct professors.
Separating graduate students from the undergrads and faculty seemed to diminish the college experience for everyone, Jones said. In part because of the hands-on instruction required, “the relationship between art students and faculty is very close,” he said.
“We feel like we can provide a much better experience for the students by bringing them back to campus,” said Carrie Corbett, MCA vice president for communications and marketing.
Paul Morris, president of the Downtown Memphis Commission, a development agency that promotes Downtown, said the Nesin Graduate School opened about the same time as the Visible Music College at 200 Madison and the University of Memphis Cecil C. Humphreys School of Law at 1 N. Front, “giving us a trifecta of graduate colleges, almost transforming Downtown overnight into a campus. So, yes, it is disappointing that they are leaving. The good news is that when the Graduate School came, South Main was really struggling. But in part due to the school being there, South Main has become one of the hottest names in the region... So we’re optimistic and confident that the space will be re-purposed for something great.”
In addition to Rust Hall, the college of art operates Gibson Hall, a small office space on Poplar near the main entrance to Overton Park, and Metz Hall and Fogelman Hall, two modernistic apartment-style dormitories built during the past decade on North Barksdale.
The MCA operating budget for this year is $9.5 million, Corbett said, with revenues projected at about $10 million. Tuition and related student expenses contribute about 80 percent of that revenue, with grants and donations covering most of the rest.