UT Dallas Sinks Hopes of Saving Art Barn and Makes Way for New Science Building

On the evening of June 12, current and former art students and faculty from the University of Texas at Dallas gathered at the school's Visual Arts Building, known colloquially as the Art Barn, for one last exhibition. The title was "Here's Looking at You Kid," and during the bittersweet opening, those in attendance pasted up portraits of themselves on the walls of the barn, the school's principal gallery space since it opened in 1978. After a years-long battle, the fight to save the beloved building, a whitewashed shed with the porthole windows and clean lines of ocean liner, had been lost. The idea was to go down with the ship.It took a month, but the sinking finally happened this week, with wrecking crews knocking down the building, which was designed by architect Lawrence Wood of the Dallas firm Fisher & Spillman. In 1979, it received an award of merit from the Dallas AIA. It will be replaced with a new science building, with facilities for the visual arts dispersed to less central locations around the campus.  Continue reading...