South County Independent

KINGSTON — On the last Saturday in May, Judith Tolnick Champa, curator of the Fine Arts Center Galleries at the University of Rhode Island, hosted and organized an art-appraisal fund-raiser for the Art Department titled “What is it worth?” Three days later, she learned that she and Roxana Tourigny, director of URI’s Great Performances, were being terminated, along with their programs.

“We raised $2,000 in five hours and it would have been more if we’d had more appraisers,” Tolnick Champa said. “On Tuesday I expected to be told that my budget had been slashed but when I found out that they were cutting the whole program, that it was going to be a wholesale dismantling of the operation ... I think it’s fair to say I was shocked.”

The moves are part of a university-wide budget reduction to address a $17.6 million budget shortfall, according to university officials. The elimination of the Great Performances series and the Fine Arts Center Galleries program, with all associated staffing, internships and operating expenses, is expected to save $325,000.

Winifred Brownell, dean of URI’s College of Arts and Sciences, called the decision “heartbreaking” but insisted that it was necessary given that “the university has to face a $17 million reduction in one year.” Brownell said that $12 million in cuts were being earmarked from Academic Affairs, with $2.97 million coming directly out of the College of Arts and Sciences.

In a statement released Friday, Donald H. DeHayes, provost and vice president of academic affairs, indicated that URI faces “a $17.6 million budget shortfall” resulting from the state’s budget crisis. According to the statement, all departments were asked to make reductions in a way that could sustain “the quality and integrity of the university’s curriculum for undergraduate and graduate programs.”

“We value both programs, and we know they provide unparalleled cultural enrichment to the university community, the residents and the artists and performers of our state,” DeHayes said. “But our top priority has to be the needs of our students.”

Tolnick Champa, who had served as galleries director and curator for 17 years, juggling seasonal calendars for the Main Gallery, Photography Gallery and Corridor Gallery, called the decision “purely cost-cutting” and “a major loss for the whole cultural scene in South County.” Over the years, the galleries had grown from being strictly focused on student and faculty work within the institution to a program that garnered national and international attention.

Barbara Pagh, chairwoman of the Art Department, praised Tolnick Champa’s service to the university, saying “she did an amazing job of putting the galleries out there.” She said the decision was “a real loss for the department because the students, under Judith, learned about the professional side of the art business and often got a chance to meet working artists or have their work critiqued by some of the top people in their field.”

Responsibility for the galleries will be shifted to the Department of Art and Art History. Brownell said that she is dedicated to trying “to rebuild the programs” and will be more actively talking with donors about endowments. She added that academic programs in art, art history, music and theater would not be affected and that both the endowed University Artist music series and the Kingston Chamber Music Festival, which is supported by external funds, gifts and sponsorships, will go on. Student art exhibitions and performances and productions by the Department of Music and Theater will also continue, with exhibitions by faculty and visiting artists dependent upon fund-raising.

Tourigny, reached by phone in Connecticut, leaves after 10 years of building the Great Performances Series into a yearlong cultural program that exposed students to world-class performing artists in classical and chamber music, theater, dance, world music and other genres. The program also embraced the southern Rhode Island community, bringing artists into schools and senior centers.

“My main regret is that the program’s dead,” Tourigny said. “When we began there were four classical performances, with no 20th-century music, nearly all performed by men over 45, doing literature that was almost all western European. Over the years, we were able to add so much diversity. We branched out from the traditional, old-fashioned way of doing things to a more exciting, energized program that provided a challenge to the audience. One of things I’m proudest of is that when I got there, you were lucky if you saw one person under 21 in the audience, but last year over 50 percent were under 21.”

On Tuesday, more than 50 people attended a brainstorming session at the URI Fine Arts Center’s Main Gallery. Facilitated by Wakefield artist and activist Marc Levitt, the two-hour meeting opened the floor to students, faculty, community members and state arts leaders to discuss the URI arts cuts and how to proceed from here.

An emotional Tolnick Champa indicated that she was still negotiating some terms of her departure. “I’m still not sure that the institution or the state truly understands the role the arts perform in terms of the educational mission,” she said. “It’s hard to get rid of something and rebuild it as well.”

Ric McIntyre, URI professor of economics and director of its honors program, said that “next to the men’s basketball team,” the galleries and performances create more attention for the university and attract more people “than anything we do.”

“Many of my students never stepped foot into a serious gallery until they came into this space,” said Cheryl Foster, URI professor of philosophy, adding that Tolnick Champa brought depth and relevance to what has become an increasingly visual culture. “Learning to look is learning to see, and learning to see is learning to think, and learning to think is the foundation of a democracy.”

Notes of Tuesday’s meeting were recorded and will be distributed as part of a group e-mail list and Web site dedicated to continuing the dialogue. A steering committee will be formed to lead that effort. A Facebook group has already been created under the heading “Save the galleries!!”

Tourigny, who is moving to Connecticut, said that she will use her experiences at URI in the next phase of her career, during which she plans to consult and write a book on outreach ideas, procedures and new approaches. She praised her audiences and URI students, whom she said were the envy of her colleagues at New England Presenters, a colloquium of more than 40 colleges, universities and private theaters that present shows.

“I was always proud to represent URI,” she said, “because it regularly had one of the highest average audiences and definitely had the most student involvement.”

Tourigny spent a day in the office last week calling all of the previously scheduled performers to tell them that the 2008-09 season had been canceled.

Great Performances, Tourigny said, was a community lifeline.

“For the elderly population of South County, now they really have no venue to see professional work,” she said. “As for the outreach into the schools, we were something special. It wasn’t just one hour out of class. It was days of working on vocabulary lists, geography, travel, environmental issues. School budgets aren’t going to be adding music, theater, dance, the arts. If anything, they’re all cutting, and I think the schools are going to miss the full experience, where it’s a whole week of buzz and then the kids meet the professional musicians and artists and find out that they are ordinary people, just like them, just like their parents.”

Pat Logan, professor at URI’s College of the Environment and Life Sciences, called it a devastating blow to the state and the region. In his view, it’s a decision that flies in the face of the university’s historic mission to provide outreach, “which means getting out of its skin and reaching into the community.”

“South County becomes almost a cultural desert,” he added. “In terms of visual arts and Great Performances, for senior citizens, this is it. Professional performances are gone from the university, gone from southern Rhode Island and gone from the region. The state of Rhode Island is losing its only major public arts outreach. Not just the university; the entire state has no other significant public contribution in the visual arts or the performing arts.”

Former students have e-mailed and called administration officials to express their disappointment about the cuts. One of them, Kristina Cinquegrana, a 2007 URI alumna who earned a BFA with a concentration in graphic design, 3-D modeling and painting, expressed her frustration in an e-mail to the Independent.

“Judith played an important role in my success as a student,” she wrote, noting that her first three-credit academic internship was designed to assist Tolnick Champa at the galleries. “ The Fine Arts Center has truly lost its best element.”

Portions of this story appeared previously on our Web site, www.scindependent.com. To comment on the story, visit the Web site.

Reader Comments

The following are comments from the readers. In no way do they represent the view of scindependent.com.

Iggy wrote on Jun 12, 2008 4:50 PM:

" With all the construction that has happened on campus, they've allowed the fine arts center to become a dump so I guess this shouldn't come as a big surprise. But it makes URI less of a university and more of a place that is only interested in chasing big grants. "

Dave Gilstein Renee OGara wrote on Jun 12, 2008 9:28 PM:

" We appreciate the continual efforts of Features Editor, Doug Norris, to bring to light the regional art scene and in particular the sad non-funding and end of the URI art galleries. As alumni of URI, we both received an excellent education in major fields other than fine art. We both chose to expand our education by taking several art classes and becoming involved in the arts community while we attended URI. As students, the URI galleries were our link to the outside world of fine art. After graduation we both pursued careers, with success, in our chosen major fields. Meanwhile, we always had a common interest the arts, and that shared passion was one of the reasons we fell in love and eventually married. After some time we were both drawn to long successful professional careers in the arts. Today we both own and operate the Charlestown Gallery. We would visit the URI Galleries and we donated to the alumni funds, hoping to help the fine art programs. Although one of us also enjoys watching the URI basketball team. Our art gallery pays sales tax and other taxes to the state, the town, and our country.
Without our education and exposure to fine art at URI we would not be artists today, have a gallery, pay taxes, and be happily married citizens.
What a SHAME "the state" feels this program at OUR liberal arts university is expendable. We would ask that this decision be reviewed. In this case "less is not more". "

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