Intentional Construction Mingles with Delicate Design, Bringing Artwork to Life in BYU’s New Art Building Galleries
In the highly anticipated BYU Arts Building, new gallery spaces for art and design will display ambitious art in an equally ambitious space.
The four art galleries will be located just inside the main entrance near the Wilkinson Student Center. “They're in a high-visibility location,” said art professor Collin Bradford. “You walk into the main atrium and the galleries are just past that — lined up so visitors can weave their way through them.”
Though simple in style, the spaces were built with every detail in mind, from sound and lighting to visibility and accessibility. Each gallery features professional-quality lighting and sound design. “Those might seem like boring things,” Bradford said, “but they make a big difference in the viewers’ experience in the gallery.”
Sound design was a major focus in planning and construction. “Art galleries can echo because they have hard surfaces and big, empty spaces,” Bradford said. “To solve this problem, acoustic clouds — panels made of sound-absorbing material — will be installed.” The acoustic clouds will be arranged in a grid pattern that forms the gallery ceiling, and then the lighting tracks will be seamlessly integrated between them.
The lighting for the galleries was designed as carefully as the sound. The galleries use high color rendering index lighting LEDs, which show colors more accurately than typical bulbs. Bradford explained that incandescent lights tend to cast a warm, yellow tone, while many LEDs and fluorescents produce uneven spikes in color that distort what we see. “When you're trying to look at color under irregular conditions, it can be difficult to see colors clearly,” he said. After art professor Peter Everett studied lighting and color in depth, the team decided on lighting that allows for both overall ambient light and targeted spotlighting.
The first gallery is the largest and will be reserved for faculty shows and visiting artists. The other three will mostly be home to student BFA final projects. “Most art programs — even private ones — don’t have as many or as high-quality galleries as we do,” said Bradford. “It gives students the chance to be ambitious, to operate more like working professionals.
These galleries will provide more than display areas — the students will also learn professional gallery practices as they prepare their pieces for display. In the Exhibition & Gallery Practices for Artists class, taught by art professor Gary Barton, students learn how to install art, patch gallery walls, arrange lighting and curate exhibitions.
On the design side, the new gallery focuses on visibility and accessibility to student work. Located on the south end of the building, it has glass walls that allow people to see in, even when the gallery is closed. “We’re excited about the visibility,” said design professor Brent Barson. “That’s something we don’t have in the WCCB (West Campus Central Building). Right now, you have to know where to look.”
Together, the new art and design galleries reflect what the Arts Building is all about — a place where students can learn, grow and create with ambition and professionalism. “The goal,” Barson said, “is to give students more motivation, a sense of pride and the reward of knowing their work is seen by others — friends, faculty and the public.”