In 1974, the state of Washington’s legislature authorized an Art in Public Places (AIPP) program, which required that ½ of 1% of building construction funds had to go to art. To deal with selecting and approving this art on campus, in 1975 Washington State University created a Building Arts Committee, which was comprised of faculty, staff, and students.
The general committee records consists of correspondence to/from the committee chair or relating to the committee’s work, meeting minutes, and documentation created by the committee or others which informed the process of selecting artworks. Project records may include correspondence relating to the project, specs for the artists’ use, floorplans and grounds plans of the area, notes on the selection process, and information from the selected artist.
The collection is in two main series, the first being general committee records, and the second relating to specific projects. Within each series are subject or project-based files, arranged alphabetically. Several of the projects comprise subseries of their own, again containing subject-based files, organized alphabetically. At the end of the projects series is one large folder which contains items applying to multiple projects. Items are organized chronologically within each file.
Project files are organized by the names used in the papers here, many of which have subsequently changed. In the file list below, current (as of 2017) building names are included parenthetically, as is the name of the selected work and the artist where those are known
This collection is open and available for research use.
Copyright restrictions apply.
WSU Building Arts Committee Records, 1974-1979
Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries, Pullman, WA.
These materials were donated to the Washington State University Libraries’ Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections (MASC) on September 9th, 1981, by Pauline Lilje, former chair of the Building Arts Committee. They were retained as UA1981-23.
Materials were processed by University Archivist Mark O’English in June, 2017. They were completely reorganized into their current file structure at that time.
This collection is indexed under the following headings in the online catalog. Researchers desiring materials about related topics, persons, or places should search the catalog using these headings.