The dean of the University of Hartford’s Hartford Art School (HAS), Nancy Stuart has announced a $300,000 grant from the Charles H. Kaman Charitable Foundation, Inc to create the Helen S Kaman Print Study Center.
Helen Kaman was an artist herself on the Hartford Art School board (1983-89), participating in many solo and group shows.
Kaman earned a BA in art from Edinboro University in Edinboro, Pennsylvania. After earning her BA, she then became a certified aeronautical engineer at Penn State University.
At Penn State, she also met her husband, Charles and founded the Kaman Aircraft together in 1946.
The 500+ square feet temperature- and humidity-controlled space will house more than 2,000 prints in the Hartford Art School collection that are now in storage and difficult to access.
The works on paper include prints, drawings, photographs, and artist’s books.
The center will include secured print storage areas, exhibition and display cases, and a viewing area for the study and research of works from the collection.
Aside from being a resource for students and faculty, the faculty will be open to visitors by appointment.
“When Nancy approached me in late October about having a student develop some conceptual designs and images for the new print room,” said James Fuller, associate professor of architecture in the College of Engineering, Technology, and Architecture, “I immediately thought of Kayla Verbitsky, who graduated magna cum laude in 2012 and is a second-year student in our master’s program.”
By mid-December of this past year, Verbitsky had presented digital layouts to the Hartford Art School and in January she created architectural design drawings for the space.
Along with the help of the Department of Architecture to develop the look of the center within the Hartford Art School, Stuart said “We also designed a brochure to show the Charles H. Kaman Foundation what we were planning and how the facility would be used.”
A 1978 graduate of Hartford Art School, Janice La Motta, served as a consultant on the project and has been helping out to design the new building.
“Many of the prints in the collection were produced as part of the Hartford Art School Print Workshop help at the school annually for almost 40 years,” says Stuart. “The workshops create collaborations between master printers and professional artists are attended by students.
Since 1978, it has hosted forty artists, including Jim Dine, Sylvia Plimack Mangold, Susan Rothenberg, Helen Frankenthaler, James Rosenquist, Ed Ruscha and Robert Stackhouse.”
The collection also contains works by former Hartford Art School faculty members, such as Wolfgang Behl, Robert Cumming and Lloyd Glasson.
Glenn Messemer, secretary and trustee of the Charles H. Kaman Charitable Foundation said “We feel privileged to be able to honor Helen Kaman in this manner and support the University and the Hartford Art School in this very special project.” “We hope to start construction this summer and have the center ready for 2016,” says Stuart.
By the time everyone is heading back to the campus in late August, the Helen S. Kaman Print Study Center should be constructed and anyone will be allowed to go in and observe all the artwork that has been in storage for years.
Be sure to check it out this fall and look at all the archives.