Facilities & Resources
The Department of Fine Arts has classrooms and studios in several campus buildings: Schneider Hall, Lutz Hall, and HPES/Studio Arts. We also utilize classrooms in the Humanities Building and teach classes in the Speed Art Museum.
Schneider Hall houses the Department’s main offices, Art Library, 3 galleries and an exhibition preparation area, foundation 2-D and 3-D design studios and foundation drawing studios, 2-D studio art programs (painting, drawing, printmaking and photography), fiber studios, interior architecture studios, and communication art & design studios including several computer labs.
The 3-D studio areas of ceramics and sculpture are located in HPES/Studio Arts along with a foundry for sculpture and several outdoor kilns for ceramics.
The Hite Art Institute oversees six galleries in two locations (Schneider Hall and Cressman Center) with a year-round schedule of exhibitions. It also operates the Visual Resources Center with over 375,000 slides and over 15,000 digital images. The Margaret M. Bridwell Art Library houses one of the largest collections of art books in the southeast, with over 80,000 volumes and subscriptions to over 300 domestic and foreign journals and museum bulletins.
The art history offices and the Visual Resources Center are located in Lutz Hall. The department’s 3-D glass program along with three exhibition galleries, are housed in the Cressman Center for Visual Arts, located in downtown Louisville.
Students at the Hite Art Institute have access to a multitude of resources through the University, including the Speed Art Museum, the University Archives which house over 1.2 million photographs and provides an outstanding resource for research in the history of photography, and the University Art Collection.
Download a Printable Map of Hite Art Institute Locations
Academic & Studio Spaces
Schneider Hall
Schneider Hall houses studio facilities, classrooms, and computer labs in art education, drawing, fibers, graphic design, interior design, photography, printmaking, and painting as well as the Department Office. The Department's Morris B. Belknap, Jr., and Dario A. Covi, Gallery X sponsor significant exhibitions during the academic year. These facilities are also located in Schneider Hall and are open for student exhibitions. Phone: 502.852.6794.
Lutz Hall
The Art History Offices of the Department of Fine Arts are housed in Lutz Hall along with The Visual Resources Center, with more than 375,000 slides and 15,000 digital images, and the Print Room, a substantial collection of original prints and drawings accessible to graduate students for study and research. Phone: 502.852.5914
HPES Building
The ceramics and sculpture facilities are housed in the Studio Arts/HPES Building. Ceramics phone number: 502.852.6796. Sculpture phone number: 502.852.6863.
Cressman Center
The glass program and expanded sculpture facilities are located at the Cressman Center for Visual Arts in downtown Louisville. The galleries at Cressman also sponsors significant exhibitions during the year. Address: 100 East Main Street; Phone: 502.852.0288. Link to the Cressman Center.
Art Galleries
Schneider Hall Galleries • Gallery Hours
Monday - Friday: 9:00am - 4:30pm
Saturday: 10:00am - 2:00pm
Sunday: 1:00pm - 5:00pm
Cressman Center for Visual Arts Galleries • Gallery Hours
Wednesday - Friday:
11:00am - 6:00pm
Saturday: 11:00am - 3:00pm
First Friday of Each
Month (Trolly Hop): 11:00am-9:00pm
Bridwell Art Library
The Margaret M. Bridwell Art Library in the Schneider Hall houses the
collection in art, design, art history and architectural history. Link to Bridwell Art Library. Link to the University Libraries.
The Speed Art Museum
The Speed Art Museum, Kentucky’s oldest and largest art museum, is
located next to the university campus. The focus of its collection is
western art, from antiquity to the present day. Holdings of paintings
from the Netherlands, French and Italian works, and contemporary art
are particularly strong. Students may become involved with the Speed Museum through classes,
research projects, and service as docents. A Museum Methods course in
the Critical & Curatorial Studies Program is offered in cooperation
with the museum. In addition, a scholarship is given annually to a
graduate student to conduct research on an aspect of the museum’s
collection. Link to the Speed Art Museum.
University Archives
The University Archives and Records Center is one of the six libraries of the University Libraries. Its research rooms and offices are located in the Ekstrom Library building, with records in its care stored in Ekstrom and two other campus facilities. A research repository of national significance, the University Archives is known for its urban history collections, nineteenth and twentieth century records of important businesses, cultural organizations, social service agencies, and churches, and personal papers of political figures, scholars, women, and members of the Jewish and African-American communities.
University Archives: Ekstrom Library, Fourth Floor East. Hours: Monday-Friday 8am-4:30pm. Phone:(502)852-6674. Link to University Archives . Link to Digital Collections.
Photographic Archives
The Photographic Archives houses almost 2 million photographs and associated records and manuscripts. Its mission is to collect significant documentary photograph collections, to organize the collections and to make them available to both the researcher and the casual browser.
The Photographic Archives has a fully staffed reference desk offering service during all operating hours. The Photographic Archives Print Service is capable of producing prints and slides of items from our collections as needed by researchers.The Photographic Archives gallery hosts changing exhibitions of prints from the Archives collections and from contemporary American photographers. Link to Photographic Archives.
The University Art Collection
The University of Louisville Art Collection was formally initiated in 1937, when the Carnegie Corporation of New York at the request of Dr. Richard Krautheimer, then head of the University of Louisville Department of Fine Arts, presented 104 original prints to the department. Among these were etchings by Millet, Whistler, and Rouault, and the complete set of Goya’s Caprichos.
Other gifts have followed since then, from private individuals as well as group entities. Intimately associated with the growth of the collection has been the name of Morris B. Belknap, Jr., who acquired original prints, drawings and some paintings for the collection and left a bequest, the income from which has been the chief source of funds for the purchase of original works of art. The collection now numbers more than 3000 pieces, counting prints, drawings, paintings and sculpture.
The collection has a twofold purpose: 1) to fulfill a pedagogical role in the University’s art curriculum; and 2) to enrich the cultural resources of the University and, consequently, of the community. The University’s substantial collection of original prints and drawings is accessible to Fine Arts graduate students for study and research. It has proved to be especially fruitful for independent projects, such as M.A. theses, one exploring the development of Edouard Manet’s etching style, another the significance of Sylvia Wald as a pioneer American practitioner of the art of serigraphy, and a third assessing the impact of Stoic philosophy on Goya’s Caprichos, as well as a Curatorial Study of the chronological position of our impressions of the Caprichos relative to the recorded editions of this work.
The Visual Resources Center
Amy Fordham, Curator of Visual Resources
Lutz Hall, Room 014 (basement)
Phone: 502.852.5917
Hours: Monday - Friday: 8:30am – 4:30pm, except for University holidays.
Visual Resources Center Digital Image Collection
The Visual Resources Center Digital Image Collection is the teaching and research image collection of the Department of Fine Arts/Allen R. Hite Art Institute Visual Resources Center. It is a continuously expanding collection of digital images covering art, architecture, cultural studies, and other related materials from prehistory through today.
Since there are numerous resources for digital images, such as the Internet and ARTstor, the Visual Resources Center Digital Image Collection will focus on images that are not readily available elsewhere, as well as provide high-quality alternatives to images that are more readily available. Images for the database are scanned from a variety of resources, including but not limited to books, magazines, journals, postcards, current slides in the VRC, and slides from faculty personal collections.
Although the collection primarily supports the daily teaching and ongoing research of faculty and students within the department, we are available to the University of Louisville community as a whole and welcome faculty and students to peruse our ever-increasing database of images, provided their use of digital images is limited to educational and scholarly purposes and follows fair use guidelines. You must have a University of Louisville (ULink) username and password to access the high-quality images in this collection. If you are unsure about fair use guidelines, refer to the University of Louisville Fair Use web page.
While the Visual Resources Center Digital Image Collection is a part of the University of Louisville Digital Collections, it has some unique characteristics to keep in mind.
- The VRC doesn’t own any of the artworks. Therefore, we have made every attempt to give copyright and photographic credit to all museums, collectors, photographers, and all others associated with the images that we include in the database. This information is included in the Source and Rights fields.
- While some of the search fields are consistent with those in the other Digital Collections and utilize the same controlled vocabularies, others are unique to the Visual Resources Digital Image Collection. All collections use controlled vocabulary from the Library of Congress Thesaurus for Graphic Materials and Library of Congress Subject Headings and Name Authorities and adhere to local standards developed for the University of Louisville Libraries Digital Collections, as documented in the data dictionary (PDF).
Unique to the Visual Resources Digital Image Collection are the following:
- Larger image – Due to copyright restrictions, you must have a University of Louisville (ULink) username and password to access the high-quality jpegs. Once you’re logged in you won’t have to enter the information again during that search session.
- Creator – Uses the Getty Union List of Artist Names (ULAN).
- Cultural Context is consistent with the Digital Collections’ Coverage field.
- Style/Period – Uses the Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT).
- Theme – Is similar to the Subject field but uses the Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT).
- Material - Uses the Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT).
- Measurements.
- Technique - Uses the Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT).
- Inscription.
- Work Type is consistent with the Digital Collections’ Object Type field. Uses the Library of Congress Thesaurus for Graphic Materials when possible, and the Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT) secondarily.
- Repository – Uses the Oxford Art Online Locations Appendix.
We have made every effort to be thorough and accurate in our cataloging of these images. Please contact Amy Fordham if you have additional information, corrections, or concerns.
