The University will join many of its peer institutions with the addition of a campus museum to be completed in 2010. The museum committee received a $500,000 donation from married alumni Rick Segal ’75 and Monica Mayer Segal ’78 that will help fund the $23 million cost of the project.
“We are thrilled to have the opportunity to share with the Wesleyan community, and especially to instill the joy and delight in the visual arts with current students, for whom this might be a first opportunity for exposure,” said Ms. Segal, speaking on behalf of herself and her husband.
The Segals have been collecting art for the past 25 years. Mr. Segal is a member of the Board of Trustees of the Neuberger Museum of Art at SUNY Purchase, and both Segals serve on the National Advisory Board of the Nasher Museum at Duke University. They have been discussing the idea of a museum with Wesleyan for the past several years and now sit on the project’s Advisory Committee.
Equipped with lab spaces, study areas, and an auditorium, and with objectives outlined in Wesleyan’s Academic Plan and the Strategy for Wesleyan, the museum will serve to provide visual literacy and intercultural competence.
“It’s something that we desperately need for our resources and for our educational purposes,” said Kenan Professor of the Humanities and Professor of Art History John Paoletti.
Paoletti, who has taught at Wesleyan since 1972, was asked by the administration to chair the museum committee. He explained the concerns that led to the project’s inception.
“We’re constrained on two fronts: available space and what we’re able to put together in terms of borrowing,” Paoletti said. “We’re bursting at the seams.”
The University currently houses its art and material culture in dispersed building across campus, including Davison Art Center, Exley Science Center, Mansfield Freeman Center for East Asian Studies, and the music buildings. The new museum will comfortably house all art and cultural collections. Furthermore, the buildings in which these collections are presently exhibited do not meet current museum standards for security and display. The new museum will ensure environmentally controlled climate and light.
“Wesleyan was due to have a works-on-paper exhibition several years ago, which had to be canceled because there were problems with the heating/air conditioning system and the space could not be temperature-regulated,” said Ms. Mayer Segal. “That gave us our first inkling of the rough shape of the existing facilities.”
As a result, Wesleyan will be able to enhance its relationships with similar institutions. The University lends its collections to other museums for display, but was previously unable to borrow art works from these museums or from alumni’s private collections because it lacked the proper exhibit standards.
The museum will be strategically raised in the former squash courts building on Andrus field, adjacent to the future Susan Lemberg Usdan University Center.
“Because of its choice location next to the new Student Center in the central hub of campus, the museum has a unique opportunity to play a central role in the life of the campus and the students,” Ms. Segal said.
The museum committee is now finalizing the museum’s schematic design. The starting construction date is to be announced and the remaining funding will come from alumni and grants from art and education foundations.
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