Katherine and Tom Belk Visual Arts Center
Organized around a central, light-filled atrium, the 43,000 square-foot Katherine and Tom Belk Visual Arts Center offers abundant teaching, studio, office, meeting, work, storage, and gallery space. This magnificent facility was designed by the architectural firm of Graham Gund and Associates of Cambridge, Massachusetts, and opened in the fall of 1993.

The centerpiece of the atrium is Auguste Rodin's life-size statue Jean d'Aire, one of six figures from his famous monument of The Burghers of Calais sculpted in 1886.



William H. Van Every and Edward M. Smith Galleries
On either side of the front entrance are the Van Every/Smith Galleries providing 2,000 square feet for rotating exhibitions.

Collection
The College's 2,700-piece permanent collection (including works by artists such as Rembrandt, Picasso, Matisse, de Kooning, Motherwell, Bearden, Kollwitz, and Hockney) is cataloged and housed in climate-controlled quarters in the basement, with adjoining rooms for preparation and materials storage.

Academic and Studio Spaces

Art history courses are taught in the 50-seat lecture hall, the Mary D.B.T. Semans Auditorium, with complete audio-visual capability and in the seminar room, which also functions as a study library for slides and digital access of works studied in each currently offered course.

Card access allows this and other work and study areas of the Visual Arts Center to be available to art students 18 hours a day.

The slide collection of over 70,000 images is managed by curator Jeffrey Erickson.  Currently we are converting to digital imagery.

For the study of studio art, the VAC contains separate shops for etching and lithography including one of the finest collections of lithographic stones in the country.

The 6,500 square-foot sculpture area enables students to work in wood, clay, plaster, metal, and features an outdoor bronze foundry.

On the second floor are large classroom studios for painting, drawing, and basic studio courses. 

Senior studio art majors are granted individual studios on a competitive basis. Faculty offices with adjoining studios and a comfortable student-faculty lounge complete the Visual Arts Center's space.