Concerning the article about building maintenance in Tuesday’s paper, I can’t speak for all UNM buildings, but the Art Building issue is not strictly about maintenance.
We have good maintenance people who work very hard to keep this building in the best shape possible.
The big problem is the building itself. It is about 35 years old, which is very old when considering the technologies that we use in the building and the large number of students that we serve.
We not do not have anywhere near enough room for classes and faculty, and the building is a bad fit for new uses. Art has changed, but the building hasn’t. For example, the electronic arts area has insufficient teaching areas despite having done major remodeling.
There’s no area to do performance art or projection art. Photography doesn’t use a majority of the darkroom and film developing area any longer, but it is in desperate need of more computers and printers.
The ethernet in the building doesn’t match the needs for setting up wired computers and stations for the department. New programs such as studio foundations and art and ecology do not have adequate space or facilities, and they are squeezing classes into rooms set up for other disciplines.
A very big problem with the building is the roof, particularly the water leaking into the building during heavy rains. Granted, it doesn’t rain often in Albuquerque these days, but when it does rain heavily there are buckets throughout the building to catch the water.
There are serious leaks in the photography computer labs that could destroy the computers. And those computers need to be covered when rain is imminent.
Water leaking onto electronics is dangerous for students, faculty and staff who work in the areas. It causes an interruption in teaching and greatly affects the students’ education. Water on the floors in several areas on all three floors of the building is also dangerous, even though we try to have the custodians mop it up as soon as possible and keep a supply of various kinds of buckets and waste baskets to catch the water.
The Art Building is also the biggest energy hog on campus, as we have been told many times. Turning off computers and lights and other efforts don’t seem to have affected the usage significantly.
The ventilation in the building is also a continual problem. We have large printmaking, ceramics, sculpture and painting rooms for which good ventilation is crucial to limiting student, faculty and staff exposure to many kinds of chemicals. The heating and cooling systems create problems throughout the year and require intense maintenance.
And this was all before the great sinkhole affair (see “Art Building sinks into a depression,” in the Sept. 6 Daily Lobo).
Get content from The Daily Lobo delivered to your inbox
It is still not clear the extent of that problem and the eventual cost, in money and in class disruption, that is expected to last for a year or more.
A parent just called to ask for a tour for a prospective student who is interested in photography. So I hope it doesn’t rain that day because the photography area will not only have buckets, mops and plastic over computers, but it is also ground zero for the sinkhole. This is a nationally ranked photography program operating in substandard facilities.
A prospective grad student came to tour the photo area on Friday. She went out of her way to visit New Mexico, scheduled an appointment for a tour and was deciding on whether UNM is the appropriate graduate school for her based on the tour.
Unfortunately, with the photo area torn up over the sinkhole, it did not appear to represent a prestigious, nationally ranked program.
The 2012 U.S. News and World Report ranking of graduate schools ranked UNM photography No. 5 in the nation and UNM printmaking No. 11, as reported in the Albuquerque Journal on March 11.
We need a new Art Building now. Building conditions should be a significant issue in campus priorities for a new UNM president and the regents, who make sure we have showcase Athletics facilities and shiny new signs alongside disintegrating academic facilities.
The arts are very important cultural and economic resources for all of New Mexico, and UNM should be a flagship university for the arts as well.
Marjorie Crow is a UNM staff member in the art department.
