Southwest School of Art Craft a Non Profit?
In an unprecedented development betwixt two local higher instruction institutions, the University of Texas at San Antonio and the Southwest School of Fine art have set in move a program for the independent art college to become role of a new school within UTSA'south Higher of Liberal and Fine Arts.
The UT Organisation'due south board of regents will consider creating a newly named school within the higher that carries forward the Southwest School of Fine art'south name, brand, and legacy. The deal, which includes the 6.6 acres of historic structures and downtown properties endemic past the Southwest Schoolhouse of Art (SSA), represents a significant expansion of UTSA President Taylor Eighmy'due south vision for the academy's downtown presence and will trigger a review of the academy's downtown master programme.
A letter of intent from UTSA was presented final Mon to the SSA board of trustees, which canonical the proposed "merger and acquisition." Meanwhile, the UT lath of regents met Th equally the ii institutions prepared to become public with the news this week. The UT regents and SSA board await to finalize terms and grant concluding approval by Nov, with UTSA taking command by the fall 2022 semester.
For SSA President Paula Owen, the agreement assures the expanded future of fine arts college education downtown and the continuation of the school's highly regarded customs arts programs.
Eighmy called it a "very special opportunity."
"These very special moments practice not come one'due south way oftentimes," Eighmy told the San Antonio Report. "There is a tangible strategic opportunity hither going forward that is much more than additive of our two wonderful arts programs. With this new school, we tin create something unique for San Antonio and our arts customs that is expansive, interdisciplinary, and commensurate with the very best schools of art in the country. I am grateful beyond measure that Paula reached out last year to begin exploration of this very special opportunity with us."
Owen initiated talks with Eighmy last summer, hoping to build on the established relationship betwixt the two schools as the pandemic continued to disrupt operations at both schools.
"Before we fifty-fifty knew the impact that the pandemic would take, SSA's lath decided to follow parallel paths: one moving forward and the other exploring our options," Owen said. "I called Taylor in early June of 2020 to talk near possible strategic partnerships considering UTSA and SSA already had existing connections. I don't recall either of usa could have imagined then that we would make it at the creation of a new fine art school combining the best of both institutions. Many people and organizations reexamined their assumptions and priorities during the pandemic, and this innovative idea was born out of that mindset."
San Antonio businessman and entrepreneur Rad Weaver, a UT System regent, is said to have played a key role in building support for the partnership, along with Randy Cain, a retired Ernst & Young executive who serves as the SSA board chair.
Click here to read UTSA's vi-page document describing how the understanding will be executed over the coming bookish year.
Completion of the proposed deal would mark the cease of the SSA after 56 years as an contained downtown arts institution, 1 that began every bit a community school of craft and grew to become the country'southward simply contained college of art in 2014.
That news will sadden many who have come up to cherish the schoolhouse, whose studio programs have served tens of thousands of adult and youth fine art students over the years, and an even greater number of people who have attended exhibitions and other events on a campus that'southward considered one of San Antonio's greatest preservation stories.
Simply the deal is all but certain to yield significant new investment in the downtown arts schoolhouse in the coming years with the considerable resources of the UT System brought into play.
Owen and her eight art faculty members and thirty other staff employees will remain in place, and the school's 42 students volition proceed in the SSA's bachelor of fine arts plan for the 2021-22 academic twelvemonth. Students will and then be invited to transfer to UTSA and savour additional financial assistance opportunities. The school's on-campus studio programs that annually serve more 4,000 adults, teens, and children, and 5,000 others who participate in off-campus programs volition be maintained after UTSA assumes command.
UTSA's Department of Fine art and Art History awards multiple undergraduate and graduate degrees in fine art, fine arts, and fine art history. The UTSA-SSA plan calls for a new school to exist created that reflects the ii institutions joining forces to create a growing program with expanded new offerings, including digital and graphic design.
One time that new school is created, a national search will be conducted for the director who volition study to the College of Liberal and Fine Arts' dean, Glenn L. Martinez, a Del Rio native recruited in July from his postal service as a professor of Hispanic linguistics at Ohio State University. Owen is expected to continue in her current leadership part through the finish of 2022.
UTSA will acquire $32 1000000 in SSA assets, including a $15 million endowment, and assume its $2 million worth of liabilities. SSA's annual budget is $five.3 one thousand thousand and Owen said the school is operating in the black, despite the pandemic and the loss of acquirement streams from its many hosted events and the annual Fiesta Arts Off-white, which was canceled in 2020 and 2021.
The deal will add new momentum to Eighmy'south plans to expand UTSA's Downtown Campus with construction now underway of the $90 million School of Information Scientific discipline and National Security Collaboration Center. A one-block SSA-owned existent estate parcel flanked by N St. Mary's, Augusta, Navarro, and Richmond streets, adjacent to the SSA campus, presents future opportunities for growth. A UTSA document states that acquisition of the property will lead the academy to revisit its downtown principal programme.
For Owen, the deal is a career capstone as an art education leader. It marks the terminate to efforts to raise millions of dollars in new funding to secure the SSA's independent future and growth.
Owen, a practicing creative person, has served as SSA's president since 1996. She led the effort to transform the school into a caste-granting plan and has been widely praised for her leadership in elevating the art schoolhouse to a four-year institution, fighting a long accreditation boxing, and expanding the school'due south studio programs.
"Evidently there aren't enough philanthropic dollars available in San Antonio to sustain an independent fine arts school in the city, which is sad," said 1 downtown business concern leader unaffiliated with the deal. "I would credit both Taylor and Paula for finding a new style forward that keeps fine art and the pursuit of an arts education at the middle of life in 1 of San Antonio's most iconic historic places. It might become UTSA property, but the whole city feels buying there."
The Southwest Arts and crafts Middle, as it was first named, was founded in 1965 and opened as a gallery in historic La Villita in 1968, coinciding with HemisFair '68. Three years later it moved to its current home in the one-time Ursuline Convent and Academy, founded as the first all-girls school in San Antonio in 1851. The poorly maintained celebrated buildings were saved from demolition past The Conservation Society of San Antonio, which acquired them in the 1960s. The Southwest Arts and crafts Center was invited to movement to the campus on the San Antonio River in 1971, and in 1981 it purchased the property.
Owen was named president in 1996 when the school was renamed the Southwest School of Art. That same year saw the expansion of the campus with the opening of the Navarro Street Building on the site of a former automotive center. Today the renamed John L. Santikos Edifice houses expansive contemporary exhibition galleries, country-of-the-art classrooms, and working studios for a range of art disciplines.
SSA welcomed its start class of undergraduate students in 2014. Four years later, 11 students were awarded the first bachelor of fine arts degrees. Fifty-fifty and then, Owen faced difficult fundraising challenges seen equally cardinal to winning long-term accreditation as a caste-granting institution.
In Nov 2020, the school won accreditation by the National Association of Schools of Art and Design (NASAD), which sets national standards for undergraduate and graduate degrees and other art and design credentials. The accreditation came more than ii years after SSA decided to append its pursuit of accreditation through the Southern Association of Colleges and Schools Committee on Colleges (SACSCOC), which imposed stringent fundraising requirements and timelines that could non be met.
Once the deal with SSA is finalized, UTSA'due south Downtown Campus will extend to multiple sites in the urban core. The original campus lies west of Interstate 35 between César Chávez Boulevard and Buena Vista Street and includes multiple academic buildings and other facilities. UTSA's Institute of Texan Cultures is located on the southeast corner of Hemisfair.
SSA's downtown properties, including its historic campus and the nearby one-cake parcel, are rising in value as the area redevelops, with a 29-story mixed-use tower on the erstwhile WOAI site beingness the latest nearby project to win approval.
The SSA campus is abode to some of the most popular downtown event spaces, including the Coates Chapel and Courtyard, a favorite wedding venue and seated dinner space, the Russell Hill Rogers Lecture Hall and Courtyard, and the Copper Kitchen Café.
The members-only dining venue Gild Giraud operates independently as a campus tenant. Information technology will go along to operate during the expected one-year transition only so volition be subject area to evaluation, co-ordinate to the UTSA document, which states that UTSA will continue making the diverse other campus venues available for rentals and public use.
Senior Reporter Shari Biediger and Education Reporter Brooke Crum contributed reporting.
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Source: https://sanantonioreport.org/utsa-southwest-school-of-art-merger/