Art Students Deserve a Place to Shine

Cheever Hall is one of the places on campus for art students to express themselves while furthering their education. How are they expected to expand their creative minds, especially the architecture students who spend the most time in Cheever Hall when they are surrounded by some of the worst architecture on all of campus? Haynes Hall is another place on campus where art students get the freedom to create, yet, this building seems to be one of the least artistically constructed buildings on campus. The students in the College of Arts and Architecture are expected to find inspiration in these subpar facilities when all that they see are gray walls, boxy construction and randomly placed blocks of color.

The construction of the art buildings has always been a subject of debate between those attending classes in them, but the conversation surrounding Cheever specifically seems to be more of an outrage. How can the pristine art form of architecture be studied in one of the least user-friendly buildings at the university? One of the main complaints about the structure of the building is the two staircases that you must go down and up in order to get around the halls. It seems almost asinine to have to walk down three steps in order to get upstairs. It feels counterproductive and interrupts the whole flow of the building. Another factor that upsets students is the confusing way that ‘classrooms’ appear to be main hallways that connect the building. For example, the room in between the stairwells, the wood shop and print lab functions as a hallway most of the time, but sometimes it is occupied by a class or a critique. When this happens, it interrupts the entire pathway of traffic and forces students who are trying to get around to go outside. 

Not only is the architecture of the buildings confusing, almost the entirety of the College of Arts and Architecture–with the exception of the Visual Communications Building-is located on the opposite side of 11th Avenue from the rest of the instructional buildings. This simple fact not only secludes the art students from the rest of this research-based university, but makes the art students feel as though they are more of an afterthought to the rest of the school. While other programs are housed in renovated and new buildings around campus, like Norm Asbjornson Hall, the art students have been learning and working in the exact same building since 1974 with little to no renovations to keep it updated. The only renovations that the Creative Arts Complex, which includes Haynes Hall, Cheever Hall and Howard Hall, have seen in the last decade is the addition of an accessible bathroom in Haynes and easier access to the recital hall in Howard. This ‘renovation’ occurred in 2013. Another one of the minimal ‘updates’ to these buildings has been painting blocks of color on the walls of Haynes Hall in an effort to make it feel more artistic, even though the placement and choice of colors seems to be rather random and not artistic at all. 

The environment that the art students are surrounded by all day does not seem the most fitting to facilitate a creative space for them to create in.

The College of Arts and Architecture has some of the most creative programs at Montana State University, yet when looking at the buildings that house these programs, you would never guess it. The effort that has been put into this college is far below what it should be. How can the university claim to be proud of all of their programs when there are clear favorites and others are obviously on the back burner?