For a school graced by imposing architecture and a scenic setting, finding art can be surprisingly difficult.

But even as students and faculty lament that the department of art and art history gets little recognition from a community preoccupied with politics and business, the campus art scene has carved out its own niche.

For now, the department occupies the first two floors of the Edmund A. Walsh Building, located a block away from the front gates.

“If you ask the question of whether we have adequate facilities for students of the arts, the answer is we don’t,” Department Chair John Morrell said. “If we compare ourselves to other schools we have half the faculty and half the space that other institutions offer.”

Though the Walsh Building was slated to be renovated as a new visual arts center in the 2000 Campus Plan, the university was unable to raise the funds and the project was tabled, according to Morrell. Instead, the art department was left with limited space, which restricts the number of classes

that can be offered and ultimately slows program growth.

“It would be nice to have a more visible space,” visiting assistant professor of studio art Evan Reed said. “We’re tucked back in a corner, sometimes people don’t even know what’s there.”

Reed, the gallery director for the art and art history departments, organizes the displays of student artwork around campus. Currently, student contributions are displayed in a gallery in the Walsh Building, in Lauinger Library’s Gelardin New Media Center and in the College Dean’s office in the Intercultural Center. LCD screens in those locations also display a rotating selection of student work.

The exhibits, which are switched out biannually, include drawings, paintings, digital art, sculpture and photography. Most of the work is gleaned from the university’s basic art courses, and the pieces themselves reflect the central themes of the curricula, according to Hubert Cloke, senior associate dean of the college.

Cloke hopes that the presence of student art in the dean’s office entryway will encourage students to explore the studio art programs that Georgetown offers.

“Part of the logic of doing this is that I want students to think of art as something that you do here,” he said. “It’s not just an extracurricular.”

But both artists and their professors agree that the display spaces currently provided at Georgetown are inadequate, hindering the growth of the art program.

“What we really need is a much larger gallery space, at least six times the size of what we have now,” Morrell said. “It’s an important part of [students’] experience of learning to create art, being able to display their creations.”

Ian Schlesinger (COL ’12), who has taken several photography classes, agrees.

“I don’t really consider [the Walsh gallery] a gallery,” Schlesinger wrote in an email. “I figured it was just there, right outside the classroom, to give the students the illusion that people cared.”

Faced with cramped space options, students and professors say Georgetown’s setbacks are an unfortunate reality they are forced to cope with.

“We need to get up to the level of other schools in terms of art. It’s not the fault of the professors or anything, that’s just the way it is,” art minor Tae Jung Choi (COL ’11) said. “Right now, [Georgetown] is just not an art school. … I feel like most people don’t really take the art department seriously.”

In order to combat that sort of apathy toward the arts, Mariel Reed (SFS ’10) founded the Georgetown University Art Aficionados in 2007 with the intention of cultivating an appreciation for art. The club was recognized by the Student Activities Committee in the same year.

“It was sort of a fledgling organization then,” GUAA member Montana Mathieu (SFS ’10) said. “They had been battling the school on a lot of administrative grounds.”

GUAA has been working to develop a better appreciation for the arts through trips to museums off campus. The group is holding on-campus workshops and three large exhibits this year in an attempt to foster more of a Hilltop-centric art scene. Last year’s GTown at G40 event, part of a month-long art and music exhibition, drew 900 attendants, according to Alexandra Crane (COL ’12), GUAA’s current president and an art history major.

Crane and Mathieu lamented the lack of funding that both the club and Georgetown’s art departments receive, as the club received $400 from SAC for this academic year. The SAC funding guidelines for 2011 allocate $490 for each student arts performance and $370 for events that feature partnerships with professionals.

Despite all the complaints plaguing the art department’s funding, students offer almost unanimous praise for the program itself.

The department currently offers between 25 to 30 studio art classes enrolling 350 to 400 students, according to Morrell. Each graduating class has 10 to 20 studio art and 60 art history majors.

“The department may be a bit overlooked, unglamorously shunned to a floor of the Walsh Building, but it has a very devoted following, and if anyone is at all interested in art, they know about it,” Schlesinger said.

Highlighting the program’s professors, Choi, who has taken six studio art classes at Georgetown, has been impressed with the quality of instruction, .

“Art professors are better at motivating you than other classes. They let you try out a lot of different things on your own. They’ll teach you something and let you play with it,” Choi said. “They’re showing you the tools and then you go out and do what you want.”

Mathieu also lauded the incorporation of the visual arts in other academic fields, specifically in the languages. She hopes that they can be worked further into other student groups at Georgetown.

“It’s hard for Georgetown students to not come across the arts as a major part of contemporary culture,” she said.

However, Crane feels that the visual arts are perceived as a hobby instead of a viable life choice at Georgetown. A career-focused mentality among students leads them to neglect the arts, Crane said.

“Those that are interested in the arts are kind of discouraged,” she said.

Introduction to Design student Keelin O’Donoghue (COL ’13) also felt the pull toward vocational studies over more artistic endeavors. O’Donoghue originally elected to take an art class because the arts have had a large influence in her family, and she felt the experience would be a relaxing addition to her schedule.

“It’s always been forced on me, and then when it wasn’t, I missed it,” she said.

“I was taking it under the impression it would be calming,” she said. “I’ve ended up spending an incredible amount of time on my work.”

According to Choi, O’Donoghue’s experience is not uncommon. A number of students underestimate the amount of effort involved in art classes, he explained, and they assume that classes will be easier than their regular course load.

“A lot of the students that actually go into the art classes, they’re taking it as something extra, just to try out, and a lot of times they’re surprised by how much work there actually is,” he said. “There are a lot of things that people don’t know about what art students do.”

Art classes require students to invest a lot of creativity into their work, and GUAA hopes to tap into this emphasis to stress the importance of art in all career choices.

“It is a part of everyone,” Mathieu said. “To kind of stretch those muscles is really important.”

Crane believes that the presence of the visual arts on campus have the potential to grow.

“The art scene is burgeoning, but I hope it really comes into its own,” she said.

Reed shares this hope.

“Art is another way of learning about culture. It’s a way of learning visually, becoming literate visually,” Reed said.

“We don’t put a whole lot of emphasis on looking at visual images and learning to decode them, and most of our ways of dealing with the world are visual, whether its computers or advertising,” Reed said. “Having a department that teaches students how to do that, what art means and how it works, is important.”