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The University of Tampa is celebrating the opening of the Ferman Center for the Arts and its new gallery spaces with a trifecta of UT visual arts exhibitions. Some will be taking place at the original Scarfone/Hartley Gallery, while others will be taking place in the new gallery spaces at the center: the Saunders Foundation Art Gallery, the Charlene and Mardy Gordon Performance Gallery and the Student Study Gallery.

These new spaces will focus on the work of students, faculty and alumni in their exhibition programming. The Scarfone/Hartley Gallery will, of course, remain the home of the BFA in Art and Graphic Design graduate showcases, as well as the Annual Student Juried, visiting artist, traveling and community exhibitions. The new spaces will provide room to share the incredible work of UT's visual arts community year-round. The first floor of the new Ferman Center for the Arts has two spaces, the Saunders Foundation Art Gallery and the Charlene and Mardy Gordon Performance Gallery, which will host one unified show annually. On the second floor, the Student Study Gallery will host two to three shows annually and will be largely focused on the works created by students from across the College of Arts and Letters.

We will open all the new spaces to the public in February with a trifecta of shows celebrating the continuum of amazing artwork by students, alumni, and current and former faculty throughout the long history of visual arts education at The University of Tampa.

The Saunders and Gordon Galleries will be filled to the brim with alumni and current and former faculty work that highlights not only the breadth of media and content explored over UT's arts educational history but also an integral facet of the UT visual arts community: faculty-student mentorship. From Feb 22 to Dec.15, 65 years in the Making will include works from The University of Tampa Permanent Collection, faculty and alumni collections comingled to illuminate the interconnected styles, media, and relationships that form between students and faculty as they work together through the art and design program. Notations alongside the exhibition works will celebrate those connections. The list of artists includes current and former faculty members: Jack King, Joe Testa-Secca, Harold Nosti and Gil DeMeza, Stacy Rosende, Lew Harris, Chad Abel, Dorothy Cowden, Chris Valle, Jaime Aelavanthara, Santiago Echeverry, Corey George, Ry McCullough, Aneka Ingold, Maria Yoho Dorsey, Barbara Stubbs, Tracy Midulla and Kendra Frorup, as well as numerous alumni including Cor Faringher, Mike Massaro, Alexandra Fernandez, Mike Weaver, Danielle Ronzo, Vivian (Nguyen) Fairman, Victoria Arnold, Carlos A. Camargo Vilardy, Marc Mitchell, David Diaz, Samantha Burns, Princess Smith, Jeff Gibbons, Brandi Coniglio- Richards, Rob Bovarnick, Nneka Jones, John Guarneri, Jodi Minnis and Dan Hesidence.

Hidden among these artists is a special group who not only graduated from UT in the arts, but returned to teach in the program: King, Testa-Secca, Rosende, van Bui, Stubbs, DeMeza, Burns, Frorup and Cowden. It also includes those whose mentorships have lifted members of this community to great heights, such as Barbara Stubbs, who showed at the Venice Biennale in 2018. In addition, it features Nneka Jones, who was selected to design a cover for TIME magazine in 2020. 

Exhibitions in the new Student Study Gallery and the Scarfone/Hartley Gallery will bring this continuum into contemporary focus with a pair of shows, A+D Currents: Students and Faculty. The “Students” portion will be up in the Student Study Gallery from Feb. 22 to May 7. The “Faculty” display will be up from Jan. 29 to Feb. 26 in the Scarfone/Hartley Gallery. These two exhibitions will feature works created in the last few years by faculty and students in UT’s art and design programs, showing the ongoing progression of media and content undertaken by UT visual artists. These two shows increase our anticipation about what amazing works will be produced in the new and advanced studios of the Ferman Center for the Arts.

UT is also proud to announce that the whole new building will be a permanent installation of this continuum with the Ferman Permanent Art installation. Featuring new, commissioned works and collected works from alumni, current and emeriti faculty, and visiting artists to UT through the long-running STUDIO-f/ Meridian Scholar program. Every floor will feature a multitude of these works, adorning every hallway with inspirational beauty, reflections of the community within and the history of UT artistic creativity.

In short, the Ferman Center for the Arts will be both a museum to the history of UT arts education and a foundation for the next chapter in that history — a chapter that will certainly see ground-breaking collaborations between the departments in the College of Arts and Letters: Music, Dance, Speech, Theatre, Art and Design, Film, Animation and New Media, Communication, English, Philosophy, Language and Linguistics.

For more information on tickets, sponsorship or other ways of supporting the galleries, please contact Jocelyn Boigenzahn, director of the Scarfone/Hartley Gallery, (813) 253-6217 or jboigenzahn@ut.edu.