Celebrating a Storied Home for the Arts

I wrote this tale of intrigue and academia for the 50th anniversary of St. Ambrose University’s Galvin Fine Arts Center. It appeared in the alumni magazine, the Scene. It’s a good example of the kind of interviewing, research, writing and editing that you can count on from Flansburg-Sivell Communications!

By Susan Flansburg

The story of Galvin is the story of a life, and a building does have a life. – Mike Kennedy, ‘60, Professor Emeritus, Mass Communications and Theatre

Galvin Fine Arts Center helps frame the west edge of the SAU campus. Designed 50 years ago to house the arts, its sprawling 1960s-era style contrasts dramatically with some of its more stately red brick neighbors. That’s appropriate. After all, you wouldn’t want to create a home for the arts that conformed to the past.

Yet stories of the past reverberate through Galvin’s very walls. Take the time that two priests erected a concrete barrier between them that had to be opened with a jackhammer. Or the time that topless women danced on the stage. Or the time a professor raced into a fire to rescue the artwork of a professor from another, competing, department.

Apocryphal? Some stories may be. But stories like these – along with memories of the many concerts, plays, art exhibits and broadcasts that have taken place, thanks to these walls – spill into the interviews of dozens of those who have called Galvin home.

In the Beginning…

Each of the arts that would ultimately find a home at Galvin had been desperate for space. Music classes were held in old Army barracks parked along the northwest corner of campus. Theatre productions were mounted atop a temporary stage covering the first five rows of seats in Lewis Hall’s Room 111 (dubbed Theatre 3). Art classes convened in Lewis as well, with silk screening taught in a room without ventilation. And Mass Communications – replete with TV and Radio – did not yet exist.

The prospect of dedicated space had the arts faculty salivating, including the priests. Rev. Cletus Madsen, Music and Drama (because theatre meant “musicals” at the time); Rev. Charles Shepler, Speech (eventually Mass Communications); and Rev. Edward Catich, Art promoted their positions vigorously. Their programs needed space, and a lot of it.

“Galvin gave each art a home,” retired Mass Communications and Theatre Professor Mike Kennedy, ‘60 says. “But in any multi-use building, all departments fight for more space.”

Maneuvering began before the first brick was laid, as the faculty pressed their cases. Each of the three priests was rumored to have drawn up his own blueprint, filled with ample classroom, studio and performance space for his own discipline. In the end, though, each was left wanting more.

“Father Catich didn’t get the building he wanted,” retired Art Professor Les Bell, ‘72 says, undoubtedly echoing the feelings of every arts faculty member. Some of them continued their campaigns. 

“You had to keep an eye on Shepler all the time,” Kennedy chuckles. “(Rev. James) Greene too, in Music. They were tough.”

They were dedicated to gaining more space.

Galvin Drama

While the faculty schemed, construction of the new arts and communications center got underway. The cornerstone was laid: 1969 would be Galvin’s founding year. But strikes and labor disputes slowed construction significantly, delaying formal opening of the new space until spring 1971. It was during one of those disputes that a booby trap is rumored to have been set.

“Galvin is full of mysteries,” KALA Operations Manager Dave Baker, ‘88 says. “One is, Why did the roof leak all the time? It turned out that the roof drain had cement in it. Was it delayed sabotage? A disgruntled worker? When it was cleaned out, the roof quit leaking.”

Another mystery – the stuff of legend and fable now – is, Did Fathers Shepler and Catich purposely erect a concrete wall between their departments, leaving just one egress apiece?

“They certainly disliked each other,” Bell remembers. “I don’t know who mandated a door there, maybe OSHA. I was teaching a printmaking class when the jackhammer started.”

While Father Catich never did get the space he wanted – a slate studio never materialized, for instance – he is most remembered for his art, and his teaching of art. Father Shepler, on the other hand, may be most remembered for “skulking around campus” – Bell’s words – with a tape measure as he looked for more space.

Father Shepler’s newly formed Mass Communications program needed it. Adding TV and Radio to the mix required room to both house and operate the new large equipment. He found one unlikely spot in Galvin’s basement.

“It was just an undeveloped sand pit,” SAUTV Operations Manager Duke Schneider, ‘76 says of the Galvin space. “Father Shepler saw it differently. He got it emptied and put in what he called a ‘color TV studio.’”

Now settled into their new home, the arts – now rubbing shoulders with each other daily – began to flourish.

Jewel of the Campus

The new fine arts and communications center opened in May 1971 with guest performers joining the St. Ambrose Chorus and Orchestra in the sound-perfect, 1200-seat auditorium for Mozart’s “Grand Mass in C Minor.” The auditorium saw a busy theatre and music calendar throughout the 1971/1972 school year, highlighted by George Carlin at Homecoming and a 60-member cast performing the musical drama, La Perichole, with support from the college orchestra. “Theatre 3” was history.

Fine art students could now showcase their work in a professional context as well. New glass cases provided a public viewing space in the art wing. Guest artists beginning with St. Ambrose graduate James Broderick, ’62, already in demand at galleries across the country, were happy to oblige.

Radio and TV had begun to attract attention as well, landing students like Schneider and Mass Communications Professor Ken Colwell, ’73, both of whom went on to make their careers at SAU. Schneider says the building itself helped make his decision to attend St. Ambrose. “I thought, Galvin is the jewel of the campus. It’s so active with the things I love: Theatre, radio, the newspaper, a dark room. I want to be a part of this.”

Kennedy describes the people who made Galvin possible with their donations as “the guy who put radios in cars” (Motorola co-founder Paul V. Galvin) and “a Davenport horse renderer who had his own saw” (Wilbur Allaert).

The Big Fire and Other Calamities

Baker was deejaying on KALA Radio when the smoke alarm went off in October 1986. He ignored it at first, thinking it was just another fire drill. When the alarm continued to sound, however, he changed his mind. As he ran down the stairs to the first floor, Schneider was headed upstairs from the basement. “I went back downstairs for a camera when I smelled smoke,” Schneider says. By the time the two of them arrived near the action, flames were shooting out the art windows.

“Mike Kennedy was running into the smoke to rescue Catich’s artwork,” Baker says. “People were helping him put it into the trunks of cars. It was heroic, trying to save our St. Ambrose heritage.”

More than 20 years later, a storm ripped the roof off.

“Half the roof was scattered in the practice field, water was spilling over the west balcony,” Galvin Director Lance Sedlak says of the 2010 summer storm. “Antenna posts were poking through the ceiling in Allaert, windows were broken, a big puddle was in front of the stage. I don’t know how we didn’t miss any performances. It was a miracle.”

It wasn’t Sedlak’s only disaster.

“One of the first performances that happened under my tenure involved dancers who notified me that they would be dancing in briefs,” Sedlak says. “I didn’t have a problem with that. They didn’t mention that they would be topless, and that some of the dancers were women. It was on the Holocaust and it was a beautiful piece. But when the curtain rose I thought, I’d  better start looking for a new job. The Monday after, a priest wrote to me and told me it was the most beautiful performance he’d ever seen on our stage.”

It’s the Arts, After All

When creative people come together, magic happens. New ideas erupt. It’s not about thinking outside the box. There is no box.

Mass Communications Professor Alan Sivell says it’s like Harry Potter going to Hogwarts.

“Once you go through the doors, magic happens,” Sivell says. “Students are safe to unleash their creativity on stage or in practice rooms or art studios. They have all this fancy modern TV equipment to use before they head off to Kansas City or Chicago or New York.”

And, like Kennedy says, “they make more of it together.”

Creative people tend toward synergy anyway.

“People in Galvin are treasures,” Bill Campbell, Professor of Music, says. “It’s so exciting to be collaborating and working with multiple creative people. We all do more than just our little discipline.”

Theatre Professor Corrinne Johnson says cooperation is the norm. “Graphic Arts students design posters for the shows. Mass Communications does videos of them. Bill Campbell has composed original music for us. We are quite interdisciplinary.”

It’s Team Galvin.

“Galvin is a lab for making different kinds of arts happen, and happen together,” Sedlak says. “Because the different departments are so close in proximity to each other they have to see each other. It’s very beneficial. It creates Team Galvin.”

It’s ironic. All that legendary skirmishing was really to no good end. The arts need each other to thrive. To create the kinds of plays that win awards, artwork that is hung nationwide, broadcasts that light up TVs from here to the coasts, and music that enters our very hearts.

Go, Team Galvin!