WSAC on Campus

The Washington State Art Collection on Campus

Exploring the pieces of the State Art Collection that are housed at Washington's public colleges and universities.

Image of Cooperation by Michihiro Kosuge (1998)

"We believe that works of art enrich our college environment and expand the awareness of students, the campus, and the community as a whole. It is the goal of EvCC to integrate art into building projects as part of the initial design" - Everett Community College's Art Collections Committee

The Collection

The portion of Washington's State Art Collection that is housed at public colleges and unviersities contains just over 880 pieces of public art and 455 artists. The pieces in the collection are dated from 1970 - 2018. There are 57 unique sites represented in the collection, including main and satellite campus locations. The largest collection (97 pieces) is housed at the University of Washington. The distribution artwork by site is visualized below. Hover over each square or slide the filter on the right to view sites with fewer pieces in their collection.

The Acquisition Process

The Washington State Art Commission keeps a roster of artists and curators; institutions can use this Artist Resource Bank to select existing artwork or select an artist based on the type of work they have submitted to the commission. Once an institution selects an art piece for purchase or commission, that institution becomes a steward of that piece as part of the State Art Collection. Additional information about the acquisition process is available via Central Washington University at: http://www.cwu.edu/art-collection/public-art-new-construction-washington-state-arts-commission.

In addition, some institutions have public art collections that expand beyond the pieces in the State Art Collection. As an example, Evergreen State College has thoroughly documented their policies and processes for selecting artwork to add to the institution's collection. Another notable campus collection, featured throughout this project, is the collection at Western Washington University, which began an internal percent for the arts program based on its capital projects almost a decade prior to the creation of the State program. The Western Washington University collection is thoroughly documented in the book, Sculpture in Place: A Campus as Site by Sarah Clark-Langager.

Percent for Art Funding

The Art in Public Places Program requires that 0.5% of funding for new public buildings and restorations that total over $200,000 be allocated for public art. On average, there have been around 300 art allocations every two years; however, because the funding is tied to to capital projects, available funding fluctuates when there are larger or smaller investments in state buildings. The 2015-2017 Strategic Plan for the Washington State Arts Commission notes that “As the economy has faltered, the enacted state capital appropriations have declined even as the legislature sought to create more jobs through construction. For example, the 2009-11 capital budgets were roughly 20% higher than 2013-15" (TAB A-11). These declines limit the ability to invest in the maintainence and acquisition of new pieces for the collection, particularly in "rural areas and distant communities" that may be experience greater declines in state building investments, but which "deserve equal support" (TAB A-11).

"An unpredictable revenue source negatively impacts AIPP’s ability for long-term or even consistent, year-to-year planning" (TAB A -11).

The visualization below charts 1) acquisitions over time and 2) the number of art pieces created and/or installed (if the pieces were created after acquisition) over time. The latter represents the year that would be listed on a plaque as the date of the creation.

Visible from this line chart is that trends in acquisitions and the creation of artwork fluctuate from year-to-year. It is important to keep in mind that the cost for each piece of artwork varies, and so the chart likely reflects both fluctuations in the capital budgets / funding allocated to the program each year as well as differences in the cost and/or size of pieces. A limitation of the dataset is that cost information for each acquisition was not readily available, this would have allowed for a trend line showing the amount spent per year on public art through the Art in Public Places program.

"When I was first invited to the campus, I had a blank slate as to what I would be doing. I walked through the whole campus area and came across the plaza where Feats of Strength was eventually placed. I found the plaza really engaging, both the design itself and the way students were using it. My work was in response to what I saw there."
- Tom Otterness, sculptor (Clark-Langager, 2002, p. 88)

Most public art pieces acquired for colleges and universities through the Art in Public Places program were created within five years of acquisition. Recently, institutions seem to moving towards acquiring site-specific work.

There has been a trend towards site-specific acquisitions on-campus. Site-specific public art is developed in relationship with the place, people, social and environmental history of its location. On college campuses, public art may interpret the learning, natural, geological, social, residential, and/or historical environment.

The bubble chart below shows for every year that art was acquired, at what point the art was created. Pieces that were created before they were acquired are above the x-axis (x = 2, created two years before acquisition). Pieces that were created after acquisition are below the x-axis (x = -2, created two years after date of acquisition; note that here, creation date is considered to be the date of installation). The size of the bubble captures the number of pieces that fit the coordinates, i.e. there were X number of pieces that were acquisitioned in 1978 and created 1976.

Most of the pieces are clustered around the x-axis, indicating that most public art pieces acquired for colleges and universities through the Art in Public Places program were created within five years before / after the year of acquisition. However, the chart overall appears to trend downwards, suggesting that institutions are moving towards acquiring site-specific pieces. This shift coincides the way that "public art has moved away from discrete objects placed in public plazas to art that is integrated within a site. In the 1980s and 1990s, there was a move in the public art field to bring artists onto design teams to work with architects to incorporate artwork into the design of a building or plaza, and public art moved toward the goal of creating a sense of place" (North Carolina Arts Council, p. 35).

There are two additionally considerations in interpreting the chart below. The first, given the fluctuations in funding for state capital projects (described above), it may be that artists have similarly shifted towards submitting samples of work that can be commissioned once there is funding secured by the state. The second, is that institutions can only commission new work if the acquisition budget is over $25,000, otherwise they will purchase existing work through the Artists Resource Bank. The shift towards commissioned, site-specific work may also indicate that the average construction costs for individual capital projects have grown over time.

"With public sculpture, the site is a defining factor"
- Beverly Pepper, sculptor (Clark-Langager, 2002, p. 62)

Explore the collection by campus: The visualization below is a bar chart which shows the total number of pieces acquired by year and institution. Hovering over each dot will provide the institution name and the number of pieces acquired that year. This visualization is best used for:
1) Learning which institutions had the largest acquistions in any given year and,
2) Looking at the acquisitions over time for a specific institution by selecting the name of an institution from the panel on the right. This will highlight the corresponding circles for that institution across the entire chart.

Photo of Cougar Sculpture by artist Avard T. Fairbanks

"This important resource is a visual library, teaching about art, and an aesthetic enhancement to the college environment, providing inspiration and access to art experiences for all. Experiencing visual art not only teaches us about how to make art, but also about how to expand our thinking and living in other ways." - Evergreen State College Art Collection Policy