February 22, 2007
Giving students real ‘gallery experience’
Uniquely Washington is a biweekly column featuring one of the University’s most important resources — our people.
Once upon a time Phillip Schwab and his friend Dick Law agitated, along with students and then-Director of the School Richard Arnold, to have some unused classrooms in the Art Building turned into a gallery. School of Art faculty and especially students needed a place to show their work, they argued. Schwab and Law, both instructional technicians in the school, were told that there was no budget to renovate the space, so eventually they took matters into their own hands. Working with student volunteers, they cleared out the rooms, applied a little paint, and voila, the School of Art Gallery was born. Shortly thereafter, Schwab left his technician position to be the gallery’s manager.
That was back in 1989. Law has since retired, but Schwab remains the manager of what is now the Jacob Lawrence Gallery, renamed in 1994 for the late artist and UW art professor.
Schwab describes the modest space (2,100 square feet) as an “instructional gallery.” Not only do students have a chance to show artwork there, but they also work behind the scenes to make exhibits happen. Schwab has an assistant manager who is a graduate student, and he trains other students in exhibit design and installation.
There’s a fair amount of that going on — even though the gallery isn’t usually open in the summer — because exhibitions change every two to three weeks. “That’s two or three times the pace of most galleries and museums,” Schwab says.
That means exhibit design can be pretty informal. The work arrives, and Schwab and his student assistants take a day to look at it and decide where each piece should go. The next day they hang it, and the day after that the exhibition is open.
“You make a number of judgments,” Schwab says of exhibit design. “You try to feature strong work to some extent, but at the same time you try to balance the exhibition so that all the rooms are strong and each artist feels his or her work has been well presented — given a chance to be itself.”
Although art students are automatically part of some shows, such as the display of works by BFA graduates each spring, they can also get a professional gallery experience by competing for space in juried exhibits at the gallery. And this year Schwab started the Forum Series, which allows a student or group of students to propose a show in one of the smaller exhibit areas in the gallery.
Some elements of the gallery’s schedule are fixed and come around every year, such as the BFA exhibit. But there are always open slots on the schedule. Last fall, for example, there was an exhibit — curated by UW Professor Lauro Flores — of work by Alfredo Arreguin, a UW alumnus. Schwab says he enjoys collaborating with other departments to produce shows, such as the Children of War exhibit two years ago that was part of a symposium on the subject.
Schwab has been at the University almost 30 years, and when asked why he’s stayed so long, he answers quickly. “I like working with the students. I think the opportunity to help people become themselves is the best thing I could imagine. Students are new all the time and they’re trying to reach for something, and that’s a lovely thing in life. It will be hard to step away from that.”
Admission to the Jacob Lawerence Gallery is always free. It is open from noon to 4 p.m. Tuesday through Saturday. For a schedule of exhibits, go to http://art.washington.edu/jlg/
