Arts center celebrates 10 seasons

By Barbara Fitzgerald
Freelance writer

Ten seasons ago last fall, the University proudly heralded the opening of its $22.5 million, 165,000-square-foot George M. Modlin Center for the Arts, new home to the departments of theatre, art, music, dance and speech.

The Alice Jepson Theatre in the Modlin Center for the Arts has hosted 10 seasons of performances. The center's 10th anniversary is in fall 2006, when special events and activities will be held for the campus community and alumni

With its Escher-like stairways, colorful tilework, gables and cupolas, copper shields and mahogany windows, medieval-style tapestry fabrics, exposed trusses and high-tech steel, Rapunzel balcony, moat-like entrance and Gothic tower, the building was assuredly the most imaginative, most unusual and most-heralded facility on campus. It still is.

Kathy Panoff, the founding and only director of the center, ranks the harried days leading up to the building's opening and, immediately after that, the start of a full weekend of programming among the highlights of her decade at the Modlin Center.

"Construction always seems to be pushed up to the last possible moment, and the schedule for the opening could not have been any tighter. The building opened on Thursday, and on the next day we started a weekend of programs and events from Friday through Sunday in both the visual and performing arts.

"That first weekend, it became clear to me that there was an incredible spirit of cooperation on this campus. The sheer magnitude of what had to be done was overwhelming, but it became everybody's personal quest, from faculty to physical plant, to get that opening weekend right."

Today, the Modlin Center is still the campus building most likely to be "shown off" to parents and campus visitors. It was so well designed and so well thought out from the beginning that few physical changes have been necessary for the building in its first decade. Recently a large, mixed-use classroom that doubles as a small dance studio was added, and classrooms and technology have been upgraded. The complex was and is state of the art.

With the exception perhaps of the Robins Center with its sporting events, the Modlin Center is the University facility most often visited by members of the Richmond community. The positive response of the city's arts patrons has fulfilled one of Panoff's early goals for the center: to make the University more relevant to the city and to bring the city to the University. She has been quoted as saying that she wanted to get as many people through the door as possible. With revenue up 35 percent and many shows sold out or close to it for a decade, she clearly has met that goal.

The flip side of bringing in local arts patrons-bringing in greater numbers of students-has been more difficult. In fact, Panoff says student attendance has been the biggest challenge of the past decade.

"This is a problem nationally. Students are busy people. The national level of student participation for arts programs is at about 10 or 12 percent. We have 35 percent participation for all our arts programs. The problem is, you have a complete turnover of students every four years, so this is something you have to work at all the time. We are always looking to new marketing strategies." One way the Modlin Center has been promoted from the beginning is as an opportunity for collaboration of the arts. Richard Waller, executive director of University Museums, says that the adjacency of the departments in the Modlin Center is important.

"The way this building was designed and the way it functions," says Waller, are "catalysts for interactions between the arts. Next fall, for instance, we will be presenting a collaboration with dance, theatre, music and art built around an exhibition called '77 Dances,' to be curated by art history professor Stephen Addiss. Students from the dance department will create dances based on works in the exhibit, performing to music created by Addiss and performed by eighth blackbird." Waller says the Modlin Center facility also has provided a valuable opportunity for growth of the University's museums and museum collections, and for the establishment of the Harnett Print Studies Center in 2001.

"Having a state-of-the-art facility for our museums has led to fabulous gifts coming to us from donors, like the photography of Andreas Feininger and the woodcuts of J.J. Lankes." Perhaps the most important contribution of the Modlin Center, Waller feels, is its campus-wide significance. "This facility has changed the climate of the University," he says, noting a significant increase in both student and faculty interest and participation through the years. Panoff agrees, citing two factors that might account for the growing levels of student attendance: the quality and distinctiveness of the programming and the support of faculty. "Faculty are our partners in this, and we have formed strategic partnerships with departments on campus. We try to offer programming that supports their syllabi so they will have added reasons to bring their students."

Panoff says she avoids signing performers and performances that students might already have on DVD or find on MTV. "Our goal is to help shape students' tastes, not just cater to what they already like."

From the beginning, the Modlin Center has been involved with and supportive of the University's core course (a required course for all first-year students). The center offers opportunities for core course students to do special projects, like an upcoming radio production on the Scopes trial, or to do plays that relate to core course studies. Recently the Modlin Center initiated a Monday Night World Theatre, with readings of plays from around the world, designed for students across the campus.

The broader Modlin Center programming, says Panoff, is unlike anything else offered in the city. "It brings the world to Richmond. We have no limits on what we can do, except that what's on our stages has to be in keeping with the overall high level of everything else at the University. We can bring Yo Yo Ma. We can focus on diversity. In an interdisciplinary spirit, we can embrace all cultures, pick the standout dance companies from around the world, for instance-Jewish, Indian, Chinese, Latino. No one else in Richmond has been bringing world programming. We can do that."

As for their aspirations for the next decade, both Panoff and Waller look toward educational goals. They cite two arts scholarships per year built into the University's new merit scholarship program and hope to see scholarships and endowment increase.

They also want to build the arts management program they have initiated. That program began a few years back with the offering of one class in arts management and has now grown to offer a concentration for students in performing and visual arts.

"Already we have it to the point that former students in the arts are starting to hire other former students, in the same way that business school connections help their students get started. We'd like to have more students in the program and more networking among arts alumni," says Panoff.

If you have questions or comments about RichmondNow or would like to submit story ideas or calendar information, please e-mail the editor, Linda Evans, at levans2@richmond.edu or richmondnow@richmond.edu

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