Bucksbaum Center for the Arts

The center was built in 1961 and consists of Roberts Theatre on the north and the Fine Arts Building on the south. The center, one of four structures designed at Grinnell by Walter Netsch of Skidmore, Owings, and Merrill, exhibits the clean lines and dramatic simplicity of the International Style derived from the 20th-century Bauhaus philosophy of architecture. Roberts Theatre is a 424-seat Greek-style auditorium with a semi-thrust stage used for plays, concerts, dance recitals, lectures, and forums. The addition of portable seating expands the theatre's capacity to about 490 seats. Overhead are concrete girders reflecting the Bauhaus technique of exposing support structures and making them part of the general aesthetic effect. A “floating cloud grid” is suspended over the seating area and contains the front-of-house lights and scenery-projection equipment. Sound, lighting, and projection controls are located in booths above the seating area on the west side of the auditorium. The theatre is named for Fred M. Roberts of the Class of 1899, a long-time trustee and benefactor of the college.  The two-story Fine Arts Building is a rectangular block, making for a pleasing contrast with the adjoining theatre, which is shaped like a musical horn to symbolize its acoustic functions. The Fine Arts Building is devoted to music, art, and dance studios, faculty offices, a storage area for the college's Permanent Art Collection, and an exhibition area in the central foyer and north hall. In addition to studios for painting, drawing, and sculpture, the building has facilities for work in ceramics and other art forms. The structure is also the site of an Arena Theatre named for Hallie Ferguson Flanagan (1889-1969). A 1911 graduate of Grinnell, Flanagan held teaching appointments in drama at Grinnell, Vassar, and Smith College. In 1935 she was appointed director of the Federal Theatre Project by her fellow Grinnellian, Harry Hopkins ’12, then director of the Works Progress Administration. Working with such notables as Orson Welles, John Houseman, Elmer Rice, Virgil Thomson, and others, Flanagan made important contributions to the American theatre while at the same time giving work to dramatic and musical arts personnel in the Depression years.