Boston University Art Gallery: Space and Time (Page 2)
By Logen Zimmerman


Although the Boston University Art Gallery has remained in the same location in the Admiral Building, for a time from the late 1960s to the mid-1970s it was also officially referred to often as the School of Fine and Applied Arts Gallery. The Gallery’s address has also varied slightly: from its first exhibition on Commonwealth Avenue until the early 1960s, it was usually known as 857 Commonwealth Avenue. During this time, the rest of the Admiral Building was most often listed as 855 Commonwealth, although it too sometimes was referred to as 857 Commonwealth. By the mid-1960s, 855 became the official address for the entire building, Gallery included.

The Buick line was decidedly middle class so expenses to Noyes’ premium showrooms had been spared, unlike the ornate 1928 Fuller Cadillac building across the street (acquired later by the University and whose grand showroom is now the 808 Gallery) (10). For example, concrete is the dominant building material of Noyes’ former showrooms. Nonetheless, the concept of automobile sales presentation in that time was far different from today. Thus, the showroom-turned-art gallery features a vaulted, Romanesque ceiling and Corinthian-style columns, which exude high culture aspirations and make it almost seem as if the space had been designed for the purpose of displaying fine art. Yet, if one looks closely, they will see expressionistic auto mechanics with wrenches in their hands and tires around their necks as well as automobile operators (wearing caps and goggles) and Atlas-like figures, all set amongst leaf-like patterns at the columns’ tops.

Long-time Boston University Art Gallery employee Evelyn Cohen, whose official title is Security, is a key to unlocking the space’s secrets (11). She has greeted visitors at her desk, down on one side or the other from one of the Gallery's few lavish features-its marble steps-since early in 1963. Working in the Gallery for four decades as well as living in the area for some time before, she has noted how its inside and outside worlds have changed. She not only remembers when the building was still the Noyes dealership, but she also owned a Buick and used to have it serviced at a station located to the west of the building. Cars displayed along Noyes’ first floor were visible from Commonwealth through mammoth arched windows. The upper stories of the building were reserved, she says, for additional car showings and offices for dealership executives.

Today, ivy crawls over blocks that fill those arched window sockets. Sidney Hurwitz, the Division’s Chairman at the time of the windows’ removal, says that early (February and March) in 1970, the exhibition American Artists of the Nineteen Sixties was mounted with the Gallery’s windows replaced by a large wall of wood paneling (12). After, the window sockets were permanently filled with blocks. Hurwitz cites issues such as the threat to artwork from sunlight as the reason for the removal of the windows and Gallery records show that Yancey Robertson, then directing the Gallery, had made the recommendation as early as summer 1969 to change many unpractical features of the space, curtains over windows included. Furthermore, Gallery records of a decade before indicate that high winds had been responsible for blowing in its windows on at least two occasions (April 1959 and September 1960). In the former case, an Edwin Dickinson retrospective exhibition, featuring the life work of the artist, had just one day before been taken down. In the latter instance, an exhibition of student work was on display and many pieces were damaged. Aronson had shortly after the student exhibition disaster called for a need for window reinforcements to protect future shows, such as an upcoming Yasuo Kuniyoshi retrospective. We may presume that the required changes were made. Cohen has a different memory of why the windows were finally removed. She recalls that it was during a tumultuous time (the President Arland F. Christ-Janer administration) at the University when there was legitimate fear of Vietnam War protestors smashing the windows during riots.

Before Cohen was, as she says, “blocked in,” her routine every morning was to pull open the floor-length curtains on the windows of the Gallery that looked out on Commonwealth Avenue as well as the curtain that covered the glass doors that are still the main entrance to the Gallery from within the building. A doorway leading into the space directly from the front of the building, which as she says was only open to the public during the dealership years, inconspicuously remains. Finally, a tan tile inlay beginning at the base of this doorway continues across the entirety of the Gallery’s floor; however, it is now completely covered inside by carpeting.

Across the first floor lobby from the Boston University Art Gallery, on the east side of the building, is the previously mentioned Gallery 102, which is used primarily by the School of Theatre Arts but also by the School of Visual Arts for year-end student exhibitions. Cohen remembers this space fondly as the “Hearst Lounge.” It had been the complementary automobile showroom to the one that is now the Boston University Art Gallery and was the location of the previously mentioned 1957 student exhibition. It has column and ceiling fixtures similar to the Boston University Art Gallery but also has heightened Gothic overtones in its fireplace and grand staircase (which are also reasons why it would not have functioned as well as the other showroom as a permanent art gallery). It was indeed at one time the “Hearst-Alumni Lounge,” with its highlights having been two 15th century Flemish Gothic tapestries, Avarice and The Knight’s Vow. These were part of seventeen total pieces, including also furniture from the Italian, Spanish, and English Renaissance periods, which had been given by the [William Randolph] Hearst Foundation of New York even though The Knight’s Vow had been a part of the J.P. Morgan Collection. These items were augmented by gifts from SFAA alumni. The Hearst-Alumni Lounge was dedicated on January 12, 1959 in a formal ceremony that involved, among others, President Case and representatives from the Hearst Foundation (13). On occasion, the Hearst Lounge also served as a carryover exhibition space for shows featured in the Boston University Art Gallery. Cohen says that the elaborate decoration scheme of the Hearst Lounge ended with the Case presidency.

From October 1959 to February 1960, the Boston University Art Gallery underwent major renovations courtesy of a bequest from the estate of the late Solomon Agoos. F. Frederick Bruck, AIA, of Cambridge, Massachusetts, was hired to make the plans for this renovation, which included a new overhead grid lighting system and self-illuminating mobile partitions (14). In April and May of 1960, the major exhibition Works from Private Collections, which highlighted many prominent private Boston-area contemporary collections, was mounted in celebration of this renovation. Today, a bronze plaque honoring the Agoos bequest hangs outside the entrance to the Boston University Art Gallery. Gallery records indicate that the idea to install this plaque came in 1960 and its design was completed in 1961.

Existing photographs of the Boston University Art Gallery’s exhibitions in the late 1950s and early 1960s add additional knowledge to how it has been altered since those early years of its existence. In these photographs, one finds the original tile floor of the showroom completely exposed, light permeating brilliantly through its windows’ curtains, as well as slightly more open area than today. Yet, despite these changes, after viewing these images, it takes only a little imagination when standing in the current space to envision its metamorphosis throughout the decades.

NOTES

1. Boston University Bulletin: School of Fine and Applied Arts 1955-1956 44, no. 10 (18 April 1955): 38. The description of the Division of Art on this page mentions that prior to the SFAA, there had been twenty-two years of visual art offerings in the College of Practical Arts and Letters. The founding of the SFAA and the repositioning of the Secretarial Studies program from the College of Practical Arts and Letters to the College of Business Administration effectively ended the College of Practical Arts and Letters. The source in reference 2 (on pg. 8), while mistakenly referring to it as a “School,” mentions that the College of Practical Arts and Letters had been founded in 1919 and confirms that it ceased to be in 1954.
2. A.J. Sullivan, “And Truth, BEAUTY,” in Bostonia 31, no. 2 (1958): 9. Sullivan mentions on the same page that this building was the “old PAL building,” by which we may assume that the Division of Art had simply remained in the College of Practical Arts and Letters’ former building after the dissolution of that college.
3. Telephone interview with Aronson, 29 June 2004, Boston.
4. For more details on Boston University’s expansion throughout the city over the years, see Sally Ann Kydd, 5. 5. Boston University (Charleston, SC: Arcadia Publishing, 2002). For in-depth details on the unique architectural heritage of the University, see Nancy Lurie Salzman, Buildings and Builders: An Architectual History of Boston Univesity (Boston: Boston University, 1985).
5. Boston University Bulletin: School of Fine and Applied Arts 1955-1956, 38.
6. Boston University News Bureau press bulletin no. 542-57 (for 22 December 1957 and after).
7. Sullivan, 9.
8. See Salzman, 108-10.
9. Qtd. in Sullivan, 9
10. See Salzman, 106-7.
11. Personal interview with Cohen, 21 October 2003, Boston.
12. Personal interview with Hurwitz, now a Professor Emeritus of Art, 12 December, 2003, Brookline, Mass. Hurwitz said that this wall collapsed one day (just before the show opened), leaving the Gallery vulnerable to outside elements. Quick action taken by Buildings and Grounds helped to restore the wall and save the artwork (as well as Robertson).
13. Boston University News Bureau press bulletin no. FA-1-59, 7 January 1959.
14. Boston University News Bureau press bulletin no. FA-44-60, 18 April 1960; and Gallery records.

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