Next year, Florida SouthWestern State College will undertake a $14.5 million renovation of its Humanities Building. Director Jade Dellinger says that while the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery will look the same, it will be getting several much-need upgrades.
“The gallery will stay the same size,” said Dellinger. “The hope is that even our ceiling, which is kind of iconic … there are lots of photos of Rauschenberg from below in this building with the ceiling … will remain the same. But we’ll have new floors, new walls, new lighting, even updated security and other sorts of things.”
Dellinger expects the renovations to begin in the summer of 2025 and take up to two years to complete. But that does not mean that the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery will discontinue exhibitions and ArtSpeak lectures.
“So over the next, at least 20-month period starting in May, we’re going to be the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery Annex … that we’re going have in the J Building, which is our library building, which is just next door,” said Dellinger.
The Bob Rauschenberg Gallery will host a final exhibition in its current space beginning in January.
“We’re able now, because also classes continue through the Spring semester in the building, to program the Rauschenberg Gallery while we make the move behind the scenes,” Dellinger said. “There will be an exhibition called David Bradshaw and William S. Burroughs Propagation that will open here the second week in January.”
The Lee campus of Florida SouthWestern State College is home to the only art gallery outside of New York’s Guggenheim to bear the name of Bob Rauschenberg, who is widely considered the greatest artist of the last half of the 20th century. The planned renovation is the first since former Edison State College embarked upon a $250,000 upgrade of the art gallery space.
MORE INFORMATION:
Humanities Hall at FSW is in Building L, a 57,316-square-foot educational facility.
FSW’s most prominent single-story building, it is located to the northeast of the five-story Barbara B. Mann Performing Arts Hall.
The building’s $14.5 million budget includes design, construction and FF&E (furniture, fixtures, technology, low voltage and other equipment).
The Bob Rauschenberg Gallery’s 2009 upgrade was spurred by the generous donation of a community art enthusiast and longtime gallery friend Donald McKee of Fort Myers, who left the gallery approximately $40,000 in his will.
In addition to the Bob Rauschenberg Gallery, the contemplated renovation will affect the art (painting, drawing, digital arts and photography), music and the theater departments, including FSW’s Black Box Theatre.
One of the important benefits that the Gallery will derive from the renovations is an expansion and upgrade of the space where it stores the works in the Gallery’s permanent collection, which include a number of valuable works by Robert Rauschenberg.
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To read more stories about the arts in Southwest Florida visit Tom Hall's website: SWFL Art in the News.