Center for the Visual Arts
Other great links to check out include a 360° view of the exterior of the CVA, a Google map to the CVA and our gallery events page.
The University of Toledo’s Department of Art provides baccalaureate instruction to just under 250 undergraduate majors in studio art, art education and art history, and graduate instruction to approximately 20 master's/masters degree students in art education. The Department also serves general university students and faculty, currently about 3,400 student enrollments per year. Located at 620 Art Museum Dr, Toledo OH 43620.
The Department’s home is the Center for the Visual Arts (CVA), a four-story building
designed by world-renowned architect Frank O. Gehry and dedicated in 1993. Physically
attached to the ground floor of the Toledo Museum of Art, the CVA provides students
and faculty direct access to the Museum’s world-class collections of Western and non-Western
art.
Key features of the CVA’s design are its collage of glass and metal boldly sculptural forms, and careful and surprising reflection of the museum’s more traditional classical forms. Interior spaces feature exposed structural beams, columns, and steel decking, all of which are painted white. Most walls are also white, with doors, baseboards and some built-in furniture warmly executed in vertical-grain Douglas fir. A few spaces are highlighted with lively color accents, including the classrooms in the basement, the Department of Art offices on the first floor, and the student lounge on the third floor. The glass curtain wall surrounding the gravel courtyard, large windows and skylights provide the interior with intensely dramatic lighting. The windows also provide surprising and exciting views across exterior vistas to other portions of the building and to the Museum. No two spaces inside, or outside of the building are alike, each having a unique combination of plan footprint, elevation, lighting and external view.
CVA classrooms house almost all courses in art history and art education. The building’s
sky-lit studios and extensive darkrooms are home to photography, painting, drawing,
new media, foundation, and printmaking classes. The Center for Sculptural Studies
(CSS), another Gehry building, houses studio space for sculpture, installation and
ceramics. The CSS is also home to all our ceramic kilns and metals foundry.
NEW! See our newest space - the Axon Labs/Studio - a hub where technology, creativity and interdisciplinary practices converge and move learning forward. Its spaces combine new and old technologies including a foundry, woodshop, laser etchers and ceramics studio.