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The History of the Benedicta Arts Center
Taken from Saint Benedict's Today, Fall 1997 Issue
It all starts with a vision
In the early 1960's, some very visionary women recognized the need not only for more space on the CSB campus for fine arts students, but a greater community need of a performance venue that could attract major productions from around the country. These women turned that vision in reality with the opening of the BAC in 1964.
Sister Firmin Escher-former music instructor, department chair, dean of fine arts, and academic dean at CSB-envisioned the need for an arts center that would do much more than meet the needs of the music department she had nurtured for 30 years. It would challenge the CSB community with its ambition and include consummate facilities for all the studio arts.
She joined with S. Colman O'Connell, then chair of the theater department and S. Jacqueline DuBay of the visiual art department to work under the leadership of S. Mary Patrick Murray with a young architect named Curt Green. Green led the committee through five states in 10 days to analyze the strengths and weaknesses of every major art center in the Upper Midwest.
Putting the vision on paper
Carefully compiling and sorting through the information gleaned on what S. Firmin calls that "marathon" tour, the committee, along with architect Green, laid plans for what would become the Benedicta Arts Center.
The vision for the center was not exclusively to provide space for student and campus use. It was to build a performance venue that would allow students, faculty, and professional performers to interact on a daily basis for the education and benefit of CSB/SJU students as well as the greater community.
Turning vision into reality
The result: when the BAC doors opened in 1964, the building could be used for theater, concerts, dance, large productions, lectures, classroom instruction, graphic design, painting, photography and metal sculpture studios.
The BAC featured very unique mechanical systems for the time period, including*:
- Motorized acoustical curtains at the side and back of the auditorium house
- Stage rigging consisting of 36 lines including 5 light lines, 5 teasers, 5 pairs of movable legs, 2 pairs of permanently hung angled legs, and 2 grand drapes
- Near perfect acoustics in the auditorium acheived through the effective use of adjustable absorbent curtains which provide acoustical tuning
What started as a vision for S. Firmin Escher, quickly became a state of the art educational facilty as well as a destination and a provider to the people of Central Minnesota for cultural events they might otherwise never have the opportunity to see.
*Information taken from American Architecture for the Arts/Volume 1, first published in 1978