Art’s place in education is a topic that has long been a subject of controversy. In an era when education and monetization are one in the same, the question of where they fit into is a topic that continues to be debated.

As Colorado State University commemorates 50 years of the Visual Arts Building, faculty, alumni and students gathered in the Hatton Gallery’s interactive and informative historic exhibition. It showcased the Visual Arts Building as a significant landmark, reflecting on the shift in the 1970s when the need for a building to house CSU’s growing art and art history department became more apparent.

What could be a dense and tedious exhibit is instead visually and physically interactive while telling the building’s incredible backstory, largely resulting from the work of Xinran Yuan and Anna Bernhard.

Higher education was a charged environment during the 1970s. College campuses around the U.S. took part in nationwide antiwar protests. These protests extended to CSU, ending in the Old Main building, which was set on fire on May 8, 1970.

The burning of the Old Main building opened the door for Perry Ragouzis, the chairman for the Colorado State University art department in 1966-95, to begin advocating for the university to fund a visual arts building.

Prior to establishing the current Visual Arts Building, the art department was stuffed into whatever rooms were not being used, and oftentimes, the reason for those rooms’ vacancies was the exact reason that made it unsafe to practice art in the first place. Painting and printmaking classes, which involve frequent use of acids and minerals, were held in basements with no ventilation, putting students at risk.

“Art is a discipline that requires specific media needs,” Bernhard said. “The reality is it’s very hard to really engage with all the media necessities in temporary spacing.”

With the help of protests, Ragouzis’ funding for the building — once nowhere on the priority list — became the top priority. Soon, Ragouzis began planning the building’s designs to consolidate the department under one roof.

“Oftentimes, you don’t have a simple answer to what job art degrees can afford students, but I think it’s more about rephrasing the question of what we want our lives to be for, what we bring ourselves to become and to contribute beyond a degree and how we reimagine a future that we cannot see right now. How can art open those imaginations in unexpected ways?” –Xinran Yuan, Director of Exhibitions and Community Engagement for CSU art and art history department

The anniversary gallery began with video and photo documentation, then taking viewers through the historic events that have resulted. Notable moments included videos of the Old Main fire and photos of former classrooms, which were followed by imagery of the new building design, student posters, alumni work, Andy Warhol’s 1981 soup can and much more.

“The sense of place, the sense of self and how students in their formative years discover who they are as individuals in a place that shaped that culture and that art,” Yuan said. “Our alum representative, Martha, talked about that camaraderie, being here so long into the night and working with each other. What she said that moved me was that they loved the work; it really is a love for the work and that dedication and that community that was so special about an arts education.”

The community and personal experience that an art education leaves students with may be attributed to the high turnout at the frequent celebrations the department hosts. Former and current students came together to celebrate the various art programs at CSU and learn the history behind some of the programs most formative years. The night’s atmosphere somewhat mirrored the atmosphere of CSU art classrooms: critically thoughtful conversation, boisterously hilarious jokes, great outfits and even better music.

“You have to bring your full self to the process of making art; there’s no other way,” Yuan said.

Throughout the projector-lit exhibit, the sense of culture and accomplishment could be felt by all who were present, even for those not in the art department who showed support.

“I loved it because I had no concept of the history of the building, … even though I went to CSU and I was in natural sciences,” said Peter Workman, Bernhard’s husband and a teacher in Poudre School District. “From my perspective now as a high school science teacher, I think that having that connection, even in my classes, I have students drawing astronomy-related poster projects. … Having that ability to connect creatively with, in my case, science, it’s such an innate human and beautiful thing that is necessary for our culture.”

The importance of art in all aspects of education, while it can be overlooked, has always been present.

“Oftentimes, I try to make a connection in art and STEM, and I see that a lot of STEM education make you be curious and learn about the outside world; yet, art is almost a discipline that is with equal sense of curiosity and rigor and methodology, (but) you’re trying to understand yourself, and that’s something that’s very deep and mysterious and takes a lot of bravery to look into,” Yuan said. “Other disciplines don’t even touch that in their methodologies. To me, the best kind of education is one that bridges to two, because you can’t be interacting with the world without having looked deeply into yourself.”

The history shown throughout the exhibit demonstrated to viewers that while much has changed, some things simply stay the same. Art’s place in higher education is one that consistently has to be defended and justified through monetization of art in the job market.

“Today people ask, ‘Oh, what jobs can students get with an art degree?’ and I think that kind of thinking is oversimplifying what an education is for,” Yuan said. “Four years of college education is so formative to our very long lives, and I think what art does to society, oftentimes, is not in these linear ways; how art impacts individuals and how that ripples out to society, oftentimes in unexpected ways.”

Looking beyond education’s capability to provide jobs, going back to the roots of the personal and societal importance of education in all departments goes beyond the ability to further monetize higher education, but rather allows us to return to the importance of critical thinking and personal connection.

“Oftentimes, you don’t have a simple answer to what job art degrees can afford students, but I think it’s more about rephrasing the question of what we want our lives to be for, what we bring ourselves to become and to contribute beyond a degree and how we reimagine a future that we cannot see right now,” Yuan said. “How can art open those imaginations in unexpected ways?”

Reach Ruby Secrest at entertainment@collegian.com or on social media @RMCollegian.