Stephanie Platt of The Current

Barry Lamar, with the UM-St. Louis custodial department, cleans the windows of the new Fine Arts Building east wing addition.

by Cory Blackwood
staff editor

Wednesday Aug. 25, from 4 to 7 p.m. an open house will be held at the new Fine Arts Building addition, which will also feature a faculty art show.

The east wing addition will open on the first day of school, Aug. 23. The 13,000 square-foot expansion cost $1.5 million to build, and almost doubles the space of the Fine Arts Building. The additional space will add room from more classrooms, offices, another darkroom, an expanded woodshop, and a print-making studio. The print-making studio will allow for a new print-making major in the Bachelor of Fine Arts field.

The east wing will also add space for Lewis Lankford, an endowed professor in the field of art education. This is one of the University's 25 endowed professorships and one of 13 sponsored by philanthropist E. Desmond Lee.

"We felt we had to add to the building," said Bob Samples, the director of University Communications, "because the Fine Arts program has grown faster than our expectations."

UM-St. Louis is the city's only public college that has a Bachelor of Fine Arts degree program. When the Fine Arts Building opened in the fall of 1996, 150 undergraduate majors were expected within the first 5 years, but 144 majors were enrolled after only 2 1/2 years.

"The Fine Arts Building opened in the fall of 1996, and we already have to make an addition," said Samples, "so you see how much interest is there."