Professor Chronicles History of UNC Charlotte Arts Department

An arts school might not be the first thing that comes to mind when most people think of UNC Charlotte, but by chronicling the history of the university’s Department of Art & Art History, Professor of Art History Jim Frakes hopes to change that.

Founded in 1964 by artist Maud Gatewood at the behest of the university’s founder Bonnie Cone, what began as the Fine Arts Program at what was then Charlotte College is celebrating its 60th anniversary this winter with a number of exhibits. 

Despite that milestone, Frakes considers the university’s arts department “young,” yet its nascent momentum and unlimited potential inspired him to dig into its history nonetheless. 

“I’ve only been here for 20 years, so I didn’t have the institutional memory,” he said. “If a student hadn’t been there in the last 20 years, I basically wouldn’t even have any idea who they were, what they were out in the world doing. As I began to look, I discovered many, many alumni who I would never have known about doing really amazing things.”

His interest in the department led him to create a role for himself as “honorary curator” of the department’s artwork. Prior to Frakes taking the helm, the department hadn’t had a traditional curator, which could lead to a lot of lost information. 

The university had ostensibly digitized many of old collections and articles, but Frakes continually ran up against broken links in browsing for such items. Believing the school could do better, his interest shifted to preserving the many stories he had learned about. 

“[There are] a variety of concerns about institutional memory, losing the past as former faculty have passed away, and I wanted to talk to those who had not,” Frakes told Queen City Nerve. “Sixty years is a time when you start to lose your first alumni and your first professors. When they’re gone, a lot of information and a lot of our accomplishments just disappear if they’re not otherwise recorded.” 

Many alumni works that Frakes uncovered during his work can be viewed in Generations, an exhibit currently showing at the Projective Eye Gallery at UNC Charlotte’s Dubois Center in Uptown. 

Highlighting the program’s decades of accomplishments, Generations features work by Eric Anderson, Susan Brenner, Edwina Bringle, Keith Bryant, Sara Catapano, Ann Carter, Jen Clay, Lili Corbus, Alexandra Giannell, John Hairston, Adé Hogue, Heather Hoover, Eldred Hudson, Susan Jedzrejewski, Jason Losko, Nadia Meadows, Carmen Neely, Martha Strawn, and Winston Tite.

A rich history on display

Frakes came to Charlotte 22 years ago from New York by way of Indiana. Over those two decades and then some, Charlotte has changed quite a bit. According to the US Census Bureau, Charlotte’s population grew from around 580,500 in 2002 to well over 900,000 today.

Not only has the population skyrocketed, the landscape has changed dramatically. Buildings that were just built when Frakes arrived have already since been torn down.

“This city just does not even care about tearing stuff down and doing something new,” Frakes said. “In one way, that’s really exciting. It makes it different on the national landscape. But as a historian, sometimes it makes me fret. When you tear things down, you lose things.”

Frakes believes there’s a correlation between the rapidly changing scene of the city and the need to preserve art history. 

“In 1964, when the program at the university was first getting started, Charlotte had this sense of itself as capable of growth, but it hadn’t yet grown, really,” he said. “It saw itself as needing greater integration into the arts conversation nationally. I began to learn that a lot of the faculty who had started our program back in the ’60s, ’70s, even into the ’80s, did so much of the work building arts institutions, educational institutions in the city that now we just take for granted, that are just part of the fabric.

He pointed to the Light Factory as an institution founded by UNC Charlotte faculty and to programs at Spirit Square and the McColl Center that were shaped in part by faculty work.

Given the fear and potential for important artwork to be lost to time, Frakes and the university’s COAA have worked together to showcase the department’s rich history of work by both alumni and faculty. 

In the last quarter of 2024, the department launched three exhibitions that highlight past works by alumni, students, faculty, and staff. Besides Generations, which is showing at the Projective Eye Gallery through Feb. 7 with a closing reception scheduled for Feb. 6, another exhibit of the same name was on display at Hodges Taylor Gallery in South End from Nov. 8-Dec. 16 last year.

Curated by UNC Charlotte Professor of Painting Andrew Leventis and George Gallery owner and director Lucy Graham-Fleishman, that iteration of Generations featured artists Elizabeth Arzani, Austin Ballard, Jamila Brown, Kalin Devone, Sharon Dowell, Nathaniel Lancaster, Laura Alma McCarthy, Kenny Nguyen, Parks Sadler, Andrea Vail, Chris Watts, and Ajane Williams. 

Then at the Mint Museum in Uptown, an exhibit titled 60 Years shows off the Mint’s extensive holdings from UNC Charlotte-connected artists as part of its permanent collection. That exhibit prominently features work from Gatewood as well as TJ Reddy, Marianne Lieberman, Rod McKillop, Richard Stenhouse, Edwina Bringle, Tom Mason, Roy Strassberg, David Brodeur and Maja Godlewska.

On display since August 2024, 60 Years will stay up through Nov. 9 of this year. 

Frakes and his team made a point to reach out to the families of deceased faculty members and alumni to solicit artwork for inclusion in these exhibits as well.

In order to curate a presentable body of work, Frakes and the department assigned each former faculty member contributor to select a former student and invite them to contribute. With that, they were able to get 40 pieces. Frakes repeated this process with current faculty and students to create what he called “conversations.”

“I called them conversations because across time, across mediums, there were differences and similarities to really notice,” he said. “Each conversation became a chapter in a fairly chunky book that is a history of the department. Each artist stimulated a conversation about what matters.”

The book also includes a chapter about the department’s founder, Maud Gatewood.

Of the alumni who were involved in the exhibit, only one has passed away: Ade Hogue. Frakes feels Hogue’s story is a perfect example of the need to preserve the art at UNC Charlotte. 

“What happens in 30, 40 years from now, the website that had [Ade Hogue’s] show on it is going to be gone for decades already,” he said. “Who’s going to know it even happened? This is the thing. If we had a museum on campus, the museum could make it its business to preserve the archives and the work itself and remember these histories, or at least make them available to people who want to try to dig in and understand something about the past. Without that it’s just all going to evaporate into nothing. So I’m trying to stop that.”

Building a foundation on the past for the future

Frakes’ mission appears to be off to a great start; thanks to the recent and current anniversary exhibits, the department has seen an increase in donations of artwork from artists who were a part of the department. 

The work is just beginning, though, and Frakes is looking to the future to continue to build on the work that’s been done. To make sure that everyone involved with the art department is well-equipped to assist in the undertaking of preserving the artwork, he’ll host a seminar for students that will teach them the necessary skills including writing museum catalog copy, building object files, and doing research on and for the collection

He hopes to hold mini shows annually to highlight either existing works in the collection or new works that have been acquired and added.

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Helpful news for Frakes, UNC Charlotte recently achieved the requirements to gain R1 research status, which is awarded by the Carnegie Classification of Institutions of Higher Education. As of November, the Chronicle of Higher Education projected Charlotte will achieve Carnegie R1 status in early 2025.

This designation is important from a research and resource perspective. It also affords investment opportunities. For Frakes, the designation is important because most R1 institutions have art museums, which UNC Charlotte does not currently have. The university’s collection is small compared to other institutions, consisting of several thousand pieces spread across the campus. Founding an art museum could go a long way in art preservation. 

“We’re starting a new era for the university art collection,” Frakes said. “We’re trying to get it into shape where, if the time comes when we can have a museum, we’re ready, that there is an interesting collection to start working with, and that we understand what we own and why it matters. And that is the work I’m doing now.”

His goal for the recent exhibits was to demonstrate what’s at stake, get the community more involved, and show appreciation to past faculty and alumni. 

“I wanted to make sure that our retired faculty understood that they were remembered, and not just because they had been here, but because they did work that still matters,” he said.

The future of the department is Frakes’ top concern, but at this point, thanks largely to his work, it looks promising. 

“I’m very happy, and it’s exciting to have something that grows and something that people believe in,” he said. “These are my goals. This is what gives me joy. I have another 12 to 15 years in this job, and that’s what I envision myself doing.”