Lucas Robertson
lrober22uwyo.edu
The University of Wyoming art department enacts a protocol which allows for student art to be thrown away after fair warning.
Students are told months in advance to pick their art up from the Art Building, and after multiple attempts at telling students, current or former, to retrieve their art it is ultimately thrown away.
“Imagine a student comes into a classroom and leaves their backpack, but it’s a really big backpack, and they never come back for it,” Mark Richie, UW professor of printmaking, said. “That’s what it’s like to have many students leave their artwork in this building.”
That is the general consensus amongst art department faculty, who have an on-going problem with students leaving their work in the building, never to be taken home.
“Do you keep your old German homework? Basically every student is informed that at the end of the semester they need to clean out their artwork,” Ricki Klages, UW art department head and professor of painting, said. “They can’t store it in the department, and that’s been a problem.”
The art department views student art pieces as homework, since the majority of it is assigned for a grade, Klages said. The philosophy used by the art department is that student work is for improvement and educational purposes, and it is up to the student to take their art home, Klages added.
“We can’t just hang on to art work indefinitely, what we do is we inform them, we’ll say that you’ve got this amount of time to take your art work home, and if they don’t take it home, what we usually do is say, ‘It’s up for grabs,’” Klages said.
It seems students are generally aware of the throw-out policy used by the art department, and while communication is always subject to human error, students are expected to take responsibility for what is theirs and to understand the position the art department has to take in the matter, Meredith Wells, UW art major junior, said.
“I’ve never seen a professor throw away a students piece in any of my classes—I haven’t heard anything about that. One of the things they are pretty particular about is if art is up in the wall, and a student doesn’t take it down,” Wells said. “They will take it down, and eventually throw it away if a student doesn’t want it.”
The art department constantly brings in guest artists and special art displays to the building, so limiting the amount of available space in the building by allowing student art to remain can become very counter intuitive, Klages said. Students who wish to succeed in their art, as well the art department, are asked to take into consideration moving their art when it is no longer necessary as to allow room for new student projects.
“We have this big table, and we get rid of anything that is no longer useful, but everything else is up for grabs for any other artist that wants to use it,” Klages said. “We can’t just let students take up locker space that is no longer there.”
Disgruntled students who become subject to the art department’s house cleaning policy are few and far between, Klages said.
With a program that thrives on the constant progression and instillation of new art works, Klages said the art department keeps strong on their stance towards student art work and the allocation of available spaces.
