USU Art Museum to Break Ground for New Art Education & Research Center

Logan, UTAH — Utah State University’s Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art will break ground on the new Wanlass Center for Art Education and Research later this month.

The community is invited to attend the groundbreaking ceremony at 2 p.m. Tuesday, June 20, in the plaza west of the museum. Remarks will be made by President Noelle E. Cockett, Logan Mayor Holly Daines, museum donor George Wanlass, and museum Executive Director Katie Lee-Koven. Following the ceremony, the museum will have a number of activities and refreshments inside the current museum for attendees to enjoy following the ceremony.

“This facility will enhance and expand learning and engagement opportunities with art that are complementary to our current offerings in the museum,” Lee-Koven said. “Furthermore, it will include visible collection storage to allow people to better understand what we do and address future growth of the collection.”

The new 9,450 square-foot Wanlass Center for Art Education and Research Center is designed by Sparano + Mooney Architects and will include:

• A multi-purpose studio classroom that will be used for art-making projects for K-12, USU courses and community classes.
• Display niches where art from the collection can be displayed for inspiration and discussion.
• A study center with an open classroom.
• A research library.
• Visible collection storage that allows the museum to easily pull and display a wide range of artworks for classes or groups to access, interact discuss and research.

Throughout the facility, visitors will experience visible compaction art storage to gain a sense of what museums do behind the scenes.

“The 21st century museum should be a multi-faceted experience and we envision this new facility as a complementary space that takes learning about art and collections to new levels,” Lee-Koven said.

About Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art

The Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art fosters engagement with modern and contemporary art to facilitate learning and promote dialogue about ideas important to the people of Utah and the mission of Utah State University. Named for its benefactor, the Nora Eccles Harrison Museum of Art was founded in 1982 through an insightful and generous gift from the Nora Eccles Treadwell Foundation. Emphasizing 20th- and 21st-century American art with an emphasis on art in the American West, today the collection consists of over 5,000 artworks.