Chronicle: Museums You Can Live In

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If everything is bigger in Texas, the residence halls at the University of Texas at Austin are no different. Some 7,300 students live on campus, and creating hominess in a hall big enough to have its own Zip code is a tall order. But UT’s Division of Housing and Food Service has managed that with museum rooms that staff members call residence galleries.

The galleries, which are former study lounges, were transformed in the past few years into educational spaces that display and explain pieces of Texas history. “What we are doing is capitalizing on the places where students could be meeting in blank general rooms,” says Division Director Floyd Hoelting, who curated the rooms. “The idea is to maximize the time that they’re in the halls to stimulate learning.” The learning happens both intentionally and incidentally, UT junior Jenny Kim attests. “If you’re bored, you just look around and see it, read it and you learn something new.”

What Kim and others have been looking at in three separate halls since 2007 are the Gallery of Great Texas Women, the Gallery of Texas Cultures and the Texas Rivers Room. In each room, the ceilings, floors and walls are dense with information and decoration. But the rest of the space is open so that visitors can tour, groups can meet or students can simply study. Whether perused like a traditional museum exhibit or regarded like a living room, each gallery achieves a different learning goal.

The Gallery of Great Texas Women displays art and artifacts that highlight 47 women who made a lasting impact on the state. Residence life staff members hope that celebrating these women will motivate students, especially female students, to achieve their goals as these women did. From the African slaves who came with settlers to the Mexican citizens who arrived when Texas was Tejas, the Gallery of Texas Cultures exhibits the state’s rich ethnic heritage of 32 distinct ethnic groups. Texas’ 39 rivers have shaped the state in interesting ways, too. The Texas Rivers Room is designed to both increase geographic knowledge and foster environmental responsibility.

To create the galleries, the Texas housing division drew from both on- and off-campus expertise. Through an interagency agreement, the Institute of Texan Cultures in San Antonio designed, produced and installed the Gallery of Texas Cultures and the Gallery of Great Texas Women. The housing division staff and students—with help from the university’s geography department, a photographer and a river guide/author—collaborated on the Gallery of Texas Rivers. Each room took between two and three years to create.

Because the rooms are still functional study lounges that are unguarded and always open to residents and visitors, there are no borrowed collections. The artifacts on display are reproductions paid for and owned by the housing division. Everything is “student-proof” and able to withstand the occasional spilled drink. Flags hang from the ceiling, maps are built into the floor and models are housed in glass cases.

Just outside the galleries are artistic works. The Longhorn Art Series, a collection depicting Texas’ historically significant mascot, is made up of paintings that were scanned, digitally reproduced and framed by UT maintenance workers. Even the copies are worth several thousand dollars, and Hoelting installed cameras to keep them safe. That said, 15 paintings as large as 9 by 21 feet have been installed for up to 10 years now and not one has been vandalized. They’re collectively prized, Hoelting says, with students often posing for pictures in front of the art.

And then there are the grand pianos. As elegant as they are, the baby grands—which can cost upwards of $25,000—weren’t purchased for looks. There are 13 in UT halls, and a tuner must come in often to adjust them. But they serve a dual purpose, providing accomplished music students a practice space with a built-in audience and allowing other students to appreciate music. “We have such artistry, such musically talented student artists, that our student population finds it a joy to go into a room where a piano is being played,” Hoelting says.

It would be hard to total up all the time and funds that have gone into creating better communal spaces, Hoelting says. But it would be even harder to calculate all the learning, inspiration and other benefits they’ve provided—or the impact they’ve had on occupancy rates and the bottom line. “Yes, it’s an investment, but it also is a big part of the reason we average such high occupancy in our residence halls,” he says. “People want to live there; they want to come learn there. They don’t want just a place to come sleep.”