Boston University Art Gallery: Space and Time (Page 1)
By Logen Zimmerman


The Boston University Art Gallery was originally an entity of Boston University’s Division of Art and traces its origins to the Copley Square area. The Division of Art was a part of the School of Fine and Applied Arts (SFAA; now the College of Fine Arts, CFA), which was formed in 1954, integrating the College of Music (now the School of Music), the Division of Theatre Arts (now the School of Theatre Arts), and the Division of Art (now the School of Visual Arts). The Division of Art, formerly a department of the College of Practical Arts and Letters, greatly expanded Boston University’s visual arts curricula (1). In the Division of Art’s classroom building at 27 Garrison Street, beginning with the arrival of major Boston artist David Aronson as Division Chairman in the fall of 1955, art exhibitions were held.

The building at 27 Garrison Street was unfavorably described as an “uninspiring, ill-lighted rabbit warren of ugly red brick […] (2).” Nonetheless, the exhibitions presented there, ranging from new faculty to New England and other American artists to student shows to New Yorker cover artist Arthur Getz, were of a notably high caliber. Aronson says that the exhibition space was one room on the first floor of that building (3). It was referred to variably as the Division of Art Gallery, the School [as in School of Fine and Applied Arts] Gallery, or sometimes by no name at all (with only the building address advertised). Although lacking a name identity, this space’s exhibition programming set the precedent for what would eventually become the Boston University Art Gallery, as the exhibitions were organized by Division of Art faculty members to enhance the curricular experiences of art students.

All Boston University schools and colleges located in the Copley area in the late 1950s were earmarked for relocation. The University was then in the middle of the President Harold C. Case administration (1951-67) and was expanding rapidly to the west along the Charles River, continuing the progress of previous President Daniel L. Marsh in forming a cohesive campus there (4). The SFAA was to leave Copley “pending the renovation of new and spacious accommodations […] on the Charles River Campus (5).” All three divisions of the SFAA converged in their new space at 855-857 Commonwealth Avenue in February 1958, in time for the second semester of the 1957-58 academic year (6). This structure was then known as the Admiral Building, with the Admiral name having derived from the electronics company that had last occupied the building, where the facility had been “dedicated to the storage and distribution of TV sets and refrigerators (7).” Yet, this building, which was designed by Arthur Bowditch and completed in 1919, owed (and still owes) its physical characteristics to its original purpose as the Noyes Buick auto dealership (8). In 1958, SFAA Dean Robert A. Choate sang the glory of this building re-envisioned as an art complex: “SFAA is now better-housed and better-equipped to do its job than any school like it in the country (9).”

In May 1957, a Conference on the Creative Arts was held in sponsorship by the SFAA and the development groups of each SFAA division: the Friends of Music, the Friends of Theatre, and the Friends of Art. As part of the conference activities, the Division of Art installed two exhibitions in the Admiral Building, even though it was not yet officially being used by the SFAA. These exhibitions were the annual showing of Division of Art student work and the annual (although for first time hosted by Boston University) exhibition of the Boston Society of Independent Artists. Photographic records indicate that the former east side automobile showroom in the front of the building’s first floor (now called Gallery 102 and listed in the Conference’s program as “Lounge”) was the setting for the student show, meaning that the Boston Society of Independent Artists exhibition, for which photographs are not known to exist (yet whose announcement card does), occupied the front west showroom (what is now the Boston University Art Gallery). The announcement card for the Boston Society of Independent Artists show lists its space as the “University Gallery.” Exhibitions held immediately following the permanent move in 1958 to the Admiral Building announced this exhibition space as the University Gallery or the “Boston University Gallery,” and beginning with the 1958-9 school year, it was officially re-christened the “Boston University Art Gallery.”

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