‘Gift of a lifetime’ to fund new recital hall on campus
Christmas was three weeks ago but Utah State University found one last present under the tree.
With what College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Dean Gary Kiger called the “gift of a lifetime,” longtime university friends Kathryn Caine Wanlass and Manon Caine Russell donated $6.3 million for construction of a recital hall on the east side of campus. The donation is the largest individual gift in the history of the university.
Wanlass attended USU in the mid-1930s and Russell attended and graduated from the school in the early 1950s. The two sisters have long been contributors to the university, HASS Director of Development Julie Pitcher said.
The new facility will be a central part of the new School of the Arts. It will be a 14,000-square-foot building west of the Nora Eccles Harrison Art Museum. Pitcher said there have been discussions about the building seating 400 people, but it might have a slightly larger capacity.
Both Kiger and Pitcher, however, say the facility will be world-class.
“We keep using that term so that people will understand it’ll probably be one of the very finest, if not the finest performance place in the state,” Pitcher said.
Sasaki Associates, a world-renowned architecture firm based out of San Francisco and Boston that designed the fine arts facility at Interlochen, Mich, will design the building. Sasaki is also responsible for the design of some of the Olympic facilities being built for the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games.
Since President Kermit L. Hall made the announcement about the facility, much excitement has been created around campus. The donation and plans for the hall didn’t just happen in the past few weeks, Kiger said.
“We’ve been building towards this for more than three years,” Pitcher said. “This is a piece that the sisters believed would move us to the next level.”
Pitcher said Wanlass and Russell believe in what USU is planning with its School of the Arts and that helped the sisters to make the large investment.
“This is really a capstone gift over a lifetime involvement in the arts program here at Utah State,” Kiger said.
When the facility is completed, Kiger said, the university will be able to take artistic events to the community, fulfilling a role as “the new land grand university.”
Programs like the Cache Chamber Music Society that have long held their events in the Eccles Conference Center and other facilities on campus will be able to move their performances to the new, yet-to-be-named, recital hall.
Construction is expected to start on the facility this spring, Pitcher said, with completion scheduled for December 2005.
The hall will replace a portion of the parking lot west of the Fine Arts Center, Pitcher said, but the designers are being careful to make the impact as small as possible.
“The designers will work very hard to make the footprint take as little of that [parking] as possible,” she said. There are plans for a parking terrace to be constructed near the facility in the future.
When the facility is completed, Pitcher said, it will be something the university and the community can be proud of.
“[The sisters] just wanted to do something that would really make a difference,” Pitcher said. “They’re very passionate about the arts.”
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