Wallace Loh
The University of Maryland and The Phillips Collection, an art museum in Washington, D.C., will announce a partnership Monday that includes new arts courses, joint programs and the creation of an open art storage facility in College Park.
The six-year partnership will allow university students, faculty, staff and Alumni Association members to receive free admission to the Washington collection for research and educational purposes. Faculty will be able to co-publish research, and the Phillips will offer internships for university students.
“The University of Maryland’s primary distinction has always been STEM,” university President Wallace Loh said. “To take the University of Maryland to the next level of excellence, it can’t only be in STEM fields. We have to be a STEAM university — science, technology, engineering, arts and mathematics.”
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The university is committing $375,000 this academic year and $525,000 for the subsequent five years, Provost Mary Ann Rankin said. Rankin and The Phillips Collection’s director, Dorothy Kosinski, said they hope to renew the agreement after the six years.
“From our standpoint, it’s an opportunity to fulfill our strategic plan of reaching out beyond the confines of our own buildings and really embedding ourselves in different communities and enhancing as much as possible our access and education potential,” Kosinski said.
Art history professor Joshua Shannon said he hopes to be involved with collaborations, whether it means teaching a new course at the university or bringing students to the collection.
“One of the things that’s exciting about this partnership is the two institutions are going to do a lot of planning together to figure out what kind of curriculum is offered and in what ways,” Shannon said. “We’ll see what kinds of possibilities will emerge as the partnership picks up this year.”
Although no location has been chosen for the new art storage facility, to be named “The Phillips Collection at the University of Maryland,” Loh said he is confident that the university, along with the Phillips and the county, will be able to raise the necessary funds.
The new University of Maryland Center for Art and Knowledge at The Phillips Collection will expand the Phillips’ current Center for the Study of Modern Art, a forum for academic work and collaboration.
The expansion includes a new arts curriculum, two or more postdoctoral fellowships, a partnership with the Phillips’ International Forum Weekend, a co-published biennial book prize for an unpublished manuscript, and a new co-presented music series.
The university also will help digitize the museum’s 9,500-item archive of books, exhibition catalogues and correspondence.
This partnership accomplishes a goal in the university’s 2008 strategic plan: collaborating with museums, galleries, libraries and performing arts organizations.
“The timing is perfect, because it’s going to allow us to do all the things we were talking about,” Rankin said. “It’s a really good match in goals and aspirations between the Phillips and ourselves.”
The university spent months trying to partner with the Corcoran Museum of Art, Washington’s oldest private art museum. But in February 2014, the Corcoran announced that George Washington University and the National Gallery of Art would take it over.
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Loh said the university remained committed to collaborating with a gallery, leading to the partnership with The Phillips Collection.
“I know that technology is important because it helps us master the world, but it is the arts that enable us to interpret and re-envision the world as it ought to be,” Loh said. “That’s part of becoming a fuller human being. When we better integrate the arts with the other disciplines of the campus, it will greatly enrich the lives of students and enhance scholarship.”
The DeVos Institute of Arts Management relocated in September 2014 to this university from the Kennedy Center to provide seminars and more programs in arts management.
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The university announced plans in February to transform the space that formerly housed The Barking Dog into an art house and restaurant. The Clarice Smith Performing Arts Center would sponsor performances, and Philadelphia music venue MilkBoy would book shows and provide food and drinks.
“There is a strategy to everything that’s happening, and that strategy is: To move the university forward, you have to partner,” Loh said. “The future really is partner and flourish or don’t partner and perish.”
Staff writer Michael Brice-Saddler contributed to this report.
