Liberal arts building rising near Langford Architecture Center

Construction is continuing on the new Arts and Humanities building on what was the lawn, or “Grassy Knoll,” south of the Langford Architecture Center’s Building A.

The  $46 million, 107,000-square-foot structure, scheduled to be completed in 2012, is the first building at Texas A&M specifically designed for instruction and scholarship in the arts and humanities.

It will house the Department of Performance Studies, established in 1999 as the first department at Texas A&M solely devoted to the arts. Faculty and students from the department have received several national and international performance awards and invitations to perform at many of the world’s top venues.

The building will also be the new home of the Department of English, which includes three recipients of prestigious Guggenheim Fellowships, the editor of the World Shakespeare Bibliography and international leadership of The Donne Variorum project, a collection of texts and criticisms of John Donne, one of the most important writers of the English Renaissance.

The new building also will house the Institute for Digital Humanities, Media and Culture, one of the university’s academic master plan initiatives.

Once the construction phase is complete, plans call for the restoration of grass and trees on the large open space that forms a quadrangle between the new building, the Williams Administration Building, the O&M Building and the Langford Architecture Center, providing a park-like public space.