During the 2024-25 academic year, we are undertaking a collaborative and interdisciplinary study of Edwards & Portman’s (John Portman’s) Charles A. Dana Fine Arts Building, Agnes Scott College (1965), documenting and understanding its history, assessing its current functions for the new Department of Creative Arts. The Dana Fine Arts Building, opened in fall 1965, was designed for art and theatre. It is now the hub of the Creative Arts, launched in fall 2023, with concentrations in dance, digital media, music, theatre, and visual practices. We are planning a more inclusive and sustainable environment. We are looking backward and forward at once: bringing together archival materials and images, restoring furniture and recultivating gardens, and incorporating and proposing accessible design – past and future.
Our work is in and around Dana. During fall 2024 the Dalton Gallery–the literal and metaphorical center through which students must pass to reach any classroom–is a workspace/design lab for developing the materials for two exhibitions in spring 2025 (February 7-May 19). Building on Dana will document and envision the history and future of the building and the Creative Arts. Patterns in Space will present contemporary art on ability and accommodation.
We are re-establishing and transforming spaces in the building. We have re-opened the original library on the first floor (now the Dana Art Library & Reading Room), which dissolved into the gallery years ago. We are recultivating the greenspaces, three courtyards and the “secret garden,” as current students call it, removing invasive plants and replacing them with native species to support pollinators. We are committing to maintaining these areas without synthetic herbicides, the third organic plots on campus.
Making these changes to the interior and exterior spaces and, we hope, restoring the Ludwig Mies van der Rohe Barcelona chairs and Florence Knoll benches from 1965, will reinforce and expand the College’s work toward greater sustainability and climate resiliency to which our Center for Sustainability and campus community have committed, in partnership with the City of Decatur.
We will also be hosting workshops and conversations with local residents and at least three groups of visiting scholars during this academic year, who will be joining us to participate in our pedagogy — and progress.
Building on Dana is gathering communities of students, staff, teachers, and neighbors to share knowledge, skills, insights, and efforts to confront existential challenges through history, design, sustainability, accessibility, equity, and social justice. We will propose and adopt plans that are better for all of us and for our planet, recognizing the histories and developing new ways forward, more inclusive inside and outside.
