Arts & Acquisitions Committee

Arts & Acquisitions (A&A as we often call ourselves) is a long-standing committee at UMA that went into hibernation for many years, and was reconstituted in the Fall 2020 semester.

The Arts & Acquisitions Committee was initially started by Dick Randall. The A&A was formed with the ethos that the care and planning of the art collection shouldn’t be a job of one person–be it an art faculty member, a facilities person or a Dean. A significant focus of the group’s work is the acquisition, campus placement, and decommissioning of artworks. With its charge, the A&A, a group of knowledgeable and informed people have to agree before a concrete slab gets poured or a large new sculpture is brought to campus. The A&A are also a resource for faculty and staff as the sounding-board and clearinghouse for campus art collection related issues.

The Arts and Acquisitions Committee is not a faculty committee; it is a university-wide committee with Art members, an outside faculty member/dean, a facilities representative and Library representation. In 2007, the members were Sheri Stevens, Vice President for Administration, Thomas Abbott, Dean of Libraries and Instructional Support, Brooks Stoddard, Art Historian, Karen Adrienne, Danforth Gallery Director and Peter St.Michel, Director of Facilities and Project Management. In 2008, Peter Precourt was the chair (and reported to Sheri), and the other members were Eric Stark, Jon Schlenker, Grace Leonard, Brooks Stoddard and Peter St. Michel. Stacey Jacobsohn later joined the committee briefly. In 2010, when Peter Precourt was unavailable to serve, the members were Sheri Stevens, Grace Leonard, Brooks Stoddard, Peter St. Michael, Eric Stark (acting chair) Bob Katz. The Gallery Director and Sheri were co-chairs.

Since 2020, the committee has succeeded in a number of projects related to the collection, including starting an online archive of all the works in the collection, systematically cataloging and storing UMA’s Art Collection, restoring five sculptures and one large work in the UMA Library (Roland Perkins’ Game of Life piece), and acquiring new works for the collection through donation.