Six-year, $38M Restoration of Historic U of A Fine Arts Center Complete

Restoration of the renowned Fine Arts Center at the University of Arkansas in Fayetteville by MBL Architecture is complete, the firm announced.

The Fine Arts Center is one of the few remaining mid-century modern structures on a prominent college campus in the U.S., according to a press release. Planning for the $38 million project began six years ago. The project entailed the performing arts center, concert hall, classrooms and a community courtyard. The opening is scheduled for April 16.

The structure was originally designed in 1951 by acclaimed architect Edward Durell Stone. The U of A School of Art will officially reopen April 16. The restoration was a partnership between MBL and TenBerke. MBL recently completed work on the Walmart corporate campus in Bentonville. Ground Control, a national landscape and urban design firm, served as the landscape architect for the project.

“We are honored to collaborate with the University of Arkansas and TenBerke on such an important project in the heart of campus,” said Roger Boskus, president of MBL, a national design firm headquartered in Fayetteville. “The School of Art’s vision for the Fine Arts Center advances the arts and sustains the legacy of Edward Durell Stone.”

Stone’s design divides the facility into three functional blocks consisting of the concert hall, classroom wing, and theatre – all tied together by a transparent lobby/gallery connecting space.

The restoration revisits a lesser-known chapter of American art history, when works by legends including Pablo Picasso, Edward Hopper, Marc Chagall, Georges Braque and others were exhibited in a region largely absent from dominant narratives of modernism.

“To work within a historically significant building is to inherit a story,” said MBL architect Chris Fowler, AIA. “Our role is not to rewrite it, but to extend it by carefully and thoughtfully breathing new life into its walls so it may continue to serve with purpose and relevance.”