By Scott Faust

The Imagine Tomorrow campaign is providing $660,000 to elevate Bemidji State University’s public service while strengthening the visual and performing arts.

At the urging of President Richard Hanson, the BSU Foundation Board of Directors voted Feb. 27 to use undesignated campaign gifts to fund both a Bemidji State gallery in Bemidji’s planned Watermark Art Center and performance travel by BSU’s vocal and instrumental ensembles.

Allocation of $500,000 for ongoing lease expenses for the BSU Gallery within the Watermark Art Center in downtown Bemidji came from a gift by the Joseph and Janice Lueken Family Foundation. Coincidentally, the late Joe Lueken, a former foundation board member and community leader who died last July, opened his first Bemidji grocery store in the Bemidji Avenue building that will be renovated as the art center.

The remaining $160,000 to establish a steady funding source for music travel came from a gift by alumni Moses Tsang ’72, who has had a successful career in banking and finance in his native Hong Kong.

“These are investments both in the university’s arts program and the arts in Bemidji,” Hanson said, “and they would not have been possible without the Imagine Tomorrow campaign.”

The BSU Gallery, about 700 square feet, will initially be used to exhibit works from two permanent university collections, the Lillie L. Kleven Print Collection and the Margaret H. Harlow Ceramic Collection. BSU students may also be able to learn firsthand about curating and interpreting exhibits, among other educational opportunities.

The partnership with BSU has helped inspire support for the Watermark, said Lori Forshee-Donnay, the center’s executive director.

“Having Bemidji State University as an official partner affirms the longtime collaboration between Watermark Art Center and BSU’s faculty and students,” she said. “Our new gallery space will allow the community access to the world-class collections that have been used as in-house teaching aides but not widely viewed by the general public or even by students in other BSU departments.”

Dr. Martin Tadlock, provost and vice president for academic affairs, said the BSU Gallery will raise the university’s profile within the region’s vibrant arts scene, adding to such on-campus assets as the Bemidji Choir, the Blue Ice jazz band, BSU Opera Theater and the Talley Gallery.

Touring by instrumental and choral ensembles is equally important, both for student learning and student recruitment, said Dr. P. Bradley Logan, the university’s director of choral activities.

On April 18, he led BSU’s Bemidji Chamber singers in a performance in the Stern Auditorium at Carnegie Hall in New York City.

“The experience of touring is really essential to the musical and even the spiritual development of our students,” Logan said. “It’s both an educational necessity and important for publicizing our program and serving communities by bringing our performers to them.”