Curating on Campus: A Dialogue

Abstract

How do you build a model program for campus art from the ground up? " This is the question Andr ee Bober faced a decade ago as founding director of Landmarks, the public art program of The University of Texas (UT) at Austin. The program stems from a 2005 university policy that aimed to engage the campus community by presenting works of art in the public realm. Bober's vision not only transformed the university's landscape, but also established Landmarks as a leading public art program in the country. Today the collection consists of 40 works of art, including 28 sculptures loaned by the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and many additional projects underway. UT alumna Amanda Douberley spoke with Bober for this spe-cial issue of Public Art Dialogue. Amanda A. Douberley (AD): When I entered the graduate program in Art His-tory at UT in 2002, the majority of art on campus was figurative and bronze. By the time I left Austin in 2008, 28 sculptures by modern and contemporary artists were headed from the Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York to UT, where they would help launch Landmarks. It is just short of unbelievable how much the campus has changed in recent years, thanks in large part to your efforts. What was the biggest challenge you faced in establishing Landmarks? Andr ee Bober (AB): The number of complications and challenges were myriad at the beginning, in large part because nobody had done anything like this before at UT. There was strong leadership that championed the program, but there were also peo-ple with ideas about how it could or should be done; there was everything from ambivalence to opposition. Some felt that spending money on art was a frivolous waste of university resources. I could understand that: I mean, I can see why the dean of a major science department would want that money to go to her lab. The other challenge is that when you talk to people about abstract ideas, it's hard to get traction. When you show them tangible things, it's much easier.