University of Virginia Library

The Neglected Arts

The Fine Arts Festival has once again
focused the University's attention on fields
that, to our great regret, have been neglected
by the University. Although with
the appointment last year of an art historian
of Mr. Hartt's repute and the breaking
of ground this year for a fine arts
complex on Carr's Hill the situation seems
to be improving, the University has a long
way to go to developing a cultural environment
worthy of a great university. Greater
efforts should be made to bring a high
standard of art, music, dance, and drama
closer to the lives of every student. An
occasional visit by the Virginia Museum's
artmobile is a stop gap measure at best.

This year's Fine Arts Festival deserves
praise in many aspects, from its handsome
blue-green poster to what should prove its
emotional highlight: Eileen Farrell's appearance
with the Richmond Symphony Friday
night. The Festival as a whole, however,
lacks a certain depth. Rather than being
unified around a certain theme, it goes
off in every direction with a smathering of
this and a dab of that. Rather than have
the embarrassment of riches that an annual
festival should offer, the events are interesting
and popular individually but put together
hardly merit any fanfare as a great
week for the arts. This is partly due to the
newness of the Festival itself, partly due to
neglect we mentioned above.

There are many healthy signs for the
arts in Charlottesville, of course. The Artist
Series, for example, had an excellent response
to the National Ballet, the first
company of classical ballet to be brought
to Charlottesville in recent memory. The
Tuesday Evening Concert Series and the
Virginia Players, to name two other groups,
have quite high standards. Yet the University
community is still unable to support
a local string quartet, one indication of a
community where a concert is considered an
artistic-not just a social-event. An even
more glaring deficiency is the absence of
an art museum. Although there are plans
for such a gallery in the new fine arts
center and even plans for a temporary
gallery in the Rotunda until the center is-complete,
the University has missed out on
the opportunity over the past decade or two
to build a distinguished collection. The
University owns a few paintings of note
(after you sift through the many marked
in the catalogue as "attributed to..." or
"after the school of ....," you realize there
are very few), but due to its failure to
maintain the Bayly Museum and due, to the
lethargy of the relevant committees, sources
for obtaining further art have been ignored
major shortcoming in an area as rich in
private collections as Albemarle County.
There is no guarantee at all that the Mellon
family, who are residents of Virginia, would
have given that superb collection of British
and American art last year to any school
but Yale, but it is disheartening to know
that the University wasn't even in the running.

We hope the opening of the fine arts
center inspires a renaissance of the arts at
the University, and that such an excellent
innovation as the Fine Arts Festival is
continued. If the fresh and exciting
work being done by a number of architecture
students, for example, is any indication,
there is hope for Charlottesville as a cultural
center yet.