“This is the LSU School of Art’s window on the world—our public window,” observed Kristin Malia Krolak, gallery coordinator, about the Alfred C. Glassell Jr. Exhibition Gallery. It’s a fair description. The Glassell Gallery is a contemporary, soaring space in the Shaw Center for the Arts, whose wall of windows opens not onto the LSU campus, but onto Convention Street in downtown Baton Rouge instead. That gives the School of Art a double-headed opportunity—to present work by LSU art students, faculty, and alumni to an audience beyond the university campus; and to expose students to exhibits of challenging, contemporary, experimental work by visiting artists, too. Both approaches add up to good opportunities for Louisiana’s wider art-appreciating public.

“Alfred C. Glassell, Jr., was a Houston industrialist. His father was involved with the building of the original Auto Hotel, and he loved art,” explained Krolak, who has overseen exhibits here since the Glassell’s opening in 2005. “He wanted the gallery to be an exhibition gallery rather than a commercial gallery. He wanted to provide a learning experience—a laboratory for students and the community to see contemporary art. He left an endowment that partially underwrites the cost of our shows. That’s what gives us the freedom of expression.”

That freedom also translates to diversity, since the Glassell strives to present exhibits in a range of media representing each of the School of Art’s six departments—sculpture, painting, ceramics, photography, printmaking, and graphic design. “We want to represent all of them equally, to show a mix, to keep everybody engaged,” she said, explaining that the educational component lends the gallery the flexibility to do some things that are more experimental, but not necessarily commercially viable, too. “We’re not only a gallery, but also an incubator in which grad students can try out their ideas, as crazy or as far out or impractical as they like,” she said. “Or we bring in artists from other places, who got their degrees at LSU, and have gone on to make it as artists elsewhere, to show students that there is hope. Because to make it as an artist, it’s hard and you’ve got to believe in yourself.”

The Glassell Gallery illustrates these points in dramatic fashion beginning February 19, with the opening of the exhibit Walter Bortollosi: All That Happened Had to Happen. Bortollosi is an Italian Post-Pop painter, and Darius A. Spieth, Associate Professor of Art History at LSU, notes that his large-scale compositions “critically and ironically dissect the sacred cows of advanced capitalist societies: mass media, information technology, addictive consumerism, omnipresent entertainment and struggles over economic power and globalization.”

“This will be his first solo show in the United States,” noted Krolak. “He’s going to stay for two weeks, which will give students the chance to see some art from the international perspective.”

The students, and—lucky for us—the rest of the region’s contemporary art-loving public, too. Because as Krolak explained, “Lots of people have the misconception that this is only for LSU or for student artists. But that’s not the case at all. It’s much more interesting when we include more people.”

The Alfred C. Glassell Jr. Exhibition Gallery
in the Shaw Center for the Arts
100 Lafayette Street
Baton Rouge, La
(225) 389-7180
glassellgallery.org

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