Committee Proposes $6.5 Million Expansion in Visual Arts Program

A vast expansion of Harvard's visual arts facilities--a program to include a Harvard Theatre and a new Design Center--has been urged by the Committee on the Visual Arts in its report released today.

As part of its printed 155-page report, the committee recommended that Harvard spend $6.5 million to fulfill what it called a "need for new buildings and for increased faculty and staff." Of this sum, $1.3 million would be for the Design Center, and one million dollars for the Theatre. In addition, it suggested the use of three million dollars for capital endowment to provide salaries for new professors and for museum staff, and $1.25 million for building maintenance.

Headed by John Nicholas Brown '22 of Providence, the committee spent over a year in drawing up the report which investigated almost every facet of the visual arts at Harvard. Financed partly by a grant from the Rockefeller Foundation, the group visited some 58 schools and colleges, and spoke to over a hundred experts in the field.

"The visual arts are an integral part of the humanities and as such must assume a role of prominence in the context of higher education," the committee said. "Perhaps at no moment in history since the invention of printing has man's communication with his fellow man been so largely taken over by visual media as today."

The report, perhaps one of the most significant since the General Education Report, made the following specific recommendations:

(1) The Department of Fine Arts should change its name to the Department of the History of Art, and it should add one or more basic courses in addition to Fine Arts 13, "in order to fulfill the complex task of introducing several hundred undergraduates to the broad field of the history of art, and at the same time to respond to their varied interests."

The report expressed the hope that "such courses will become eligible for admission to the general education program," but it did not specify whether it advocated a new Gen Ed requirement or whether such courses would be included under the present humanities requirement.

(2) A new department called the Department of Design should be set up to provide a basic course in the theory of design, to be "adjusted to modern methods and needs and coordinated with studies in the techniques of drawing, painting and sculpture."

It would also offer courses in contemporary design; drawing and painting; two- and three-dimensional design; and advanced courses in the various branches of design, stressing practical topics now offered by the Department of Architectural Sciences.

In addition, the report asked that an undergraduate concentration in design be established to include and extend the present concentration in architectural sciences.

(3) Two new buildings should be bulit, the Design Center, to house the activities of the new department and related activities of the Graduate School of Design, and the Harvard Theatre.

The theatre should accommodate the productions of all undergraduate organizations, including the Hasty Pudding and other club shows. In addition, the theatre should present special motion picture programs; accommodate certain University concerts and musical programs; provile space for meetings, lectures and conferences related to the visual arts; and offer its lobby as a changing exhibit area for theatrical exhibitions.

(4) An endowed chair for a professorship in dramatic arts should be established at Harvard, with the holder of the chair also the chairman of the theatre program and the director of the Harvard Theatre. The report also suggested that a second faculty member be appointed to serve as a designer-technician "to aid in maintaining a high quality of theatre."

In addition, it recommended two theatre courses be introduced--a course in the development of the visual theatre and drama, and one in play production.

The other members of the committee were: Francis Keppel '38, dean of the School of Education; Donald Oenslager '23, noted stage designer and professor of Stage Design at Yale; Dean Charles H. Sawyer of the Yale School of Fine Arts; Professor Wolfgang Stechow of Oberlin; George Wald, professor of Biology; John Walker '30, Chief Curator of the National Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C.; and S. Lane Faison, Jr., Executive Secretary of the Committee