Performing arts finally get in on the act with new theaters

Better facilities mean better performances, instructors say.
WILLIAMSTOWN, Mass. (AP) -- The scientists got their laboratories, the jocks their plush weight rooms and climbing walls.
Now, at last, the massive campus building boom of the past 15 years is getting around to the performing arts. From big, public universities to small, liberal arts institutions such as Williams College, schools around the country are throwing unprecedented sums at new and often architecturally striking arts venues.
The big winners, of course, are student dancers, actors and musicians. Long accustomed to cramped, dark spaces, many are now enjoying more inspiring quarters, along with top-of-the-line electronics and acoustic setups. Top-shelf artists are taking their tours to campus.
The result, instructors say: Students are simply performing better.
"When you have a great building, you are inspired to do something great," said Leon Botstein, conductor of the American Symphony Orchestra and president of Bard College in Annandale-on-Hudson, N.Y., which opened a new arts center in 2003. "For us, the building had the immediate impact of raising the aspirations of everyone involved in the arts."
But schools aren't just trying to please their theater majors. They are looking to these buildings to help attract students and faculty from a range of fields who are interested in culture, and to improve town-gown ties by making the local college a place to see a show or concert.
Some of the new structures are the most exotic buildings on campus.
New buildings
The most unusual include Bard's Fisher Center, a Frank Gehry-designed, soaring, silver wing-like structure, and a new, $50-million theater complex that opened this fall at Williams. Other schools christening new theaters recently include Emory University in Atlanta ($37 million), and the universities of Denver ($70 million), Notre Dame ($64 million), Maryland ($128 million) and California, Davis ($46 million).
The University of Virginia, Virginia Tech, Miami of Ohio and Sonoma State in California are among the many schools in various stages of planning and fund raising for new buildings. Princeton has opened a new theater and recently announced a $101 million gift for the arts.
Yet, in a sense, culture-lovers on campus still are at the end of the line.
Today's building boom comes well into a run that began in the early 1990s. Sports centers had more voluble supporters and offered stronger marketing opportunities. Competition for more and better students led to cushier dorms and an arms race of ever-more-luxurious campus centers. New science and engineering labs offered the promise of more research grants.
But there are signs students also want more from the arts at school. While the number of high school SAT-takers expressing interest in pursuing an engineering major has risen just 4 percent over the past decade, the increase for the visual arts has been 44 percent, according to an analysis by Art & amp; Science Group, a consulting firm.
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