2025 marks half a century as UTA welcomes students in the Fine Arts Building. Classrooms, studio spaces, and communal areas have changed and moved quite a lot since spring 1975. This mini-exhibit, open through December 19, features materials from the archives of the Department of Art & Art History and UTA Special Collections that focus on the period between 1970-1975 when the new arts complex came into being.When in the late 1960s, UTA’s fine arts curricula was elevated from 2-year transfer programs to 4-year degree granting status, this area became one of the fastest growing on campus. Noting that, the 1970 letter from UTA President Frank Harrison, addresses the need for “a building of approximately 225,000 sq ft” to house the Departments of Architecture, Art, Music and Speech-Drama, which by 1972 together counted 1,326 majors  - nearly 10% of the total UTA student population (15,432). Fine Arts Complex began to take shape along South Cooper Street around the existing University Theatre in the summer 1973. In January 1975, Shorthorn article showed perplexed students next to a building map in a “castle-like” maze of a newly opened Fine Arts Center. The writers of Ft.Worth Star Telegram called it “the mammoth 4-story building,” the “great Wall of China” cutting through UTA campus and pointed at its “massive and impersonal” style, with a giant loggia as its most distinguishing feature. On display at the Visual Resource Collections Gallery are historic photographs, press clippings, old UTA yearbooks, the remnants of former art building, which got demolished, and the materials from the original Fine Arts Building blueprints. Special thanks to Heather Claney (Reference Services Manager at UTA Special Collections), Mark Cook (UTA Digitization Services Manager), Nicholas William (Lead Digitization Specialist), Jack Plummer (Professor Emeritus, Department of Art and Art History), and Rita Lasater (former Director of the Visual Resource Commons) for documenting, preserving the traces of time, and helping us navigate through the archives to carry the memory further.The Visual Resource Collectiosn Gallery is open Monday-Friday, 9 a.m.-5 p.m.

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