How Temple’s Art Inspired VCU’s Communication Professionals
Trust mural in the T. Edward Temple building at Virginia Commonwealth University (photo by Eric Everington)
This was part of a group project for my Visual Journalism class. I helped write the print story and I conducted the interview with Joshua Smith.
By Jaclyn Barton, Patricia Cason, Eric Everington, Adam Hamza
RICHMOND, Va -- Vibrant murals cover the halls of the Virginia Commonwealth University’s T. Edward Temple building, but they’ve not always been here. A decade ago, the walls were a plain beige color, reminiscent of a hospital or public school.
The murals were painted with journalism, advertising and public relations programs in mind and were meant to capture different aspects of media in order to inspire students in the Robertson School.
Scott Sherman, associate professor of advertising at the Robertson School, remembers a time when the walls of the Temple building were dull and without character. He felt a learning space without life would inspire mediocre thinking.
“If we’ve got beige cinder block, that’s probably going to inspire beige cinder block thinking and that’s not something that really aligns with what we do, so that was the initial thought [behind the murals],” Sherman said.
The ONE VCU Master plan is the university’s development plan over the next decade and was approved in March by the Board of Visitors. The Temple building, named after former VCU president T. Edward Temple, is marked to be demolished along with the student Commons and the Thalhimer Tennis Center.
Madison Bambini is a senior broadcast journalism major who will graduate in May with a bachelor of science. After spending years inside the T. Edward Temple building, she has a lot of questions about the ONE VCU Master plan and how it will impact future broadcast journalism students.
“If we tear down Temple in that process between old Temple being torn down and new Temple being built, those students aren't going to have the opportunity that we had by having this nice studio,” Bambini said.
Joshua Smith, instructor of public relations at the Robertson School, remembers coming back to VCU as a master’s student and being surprised by how much the hallways had changed.
“You can’t not notice these murals. They were intended to stand out. They were intended to, you know, be vibrant,” Smith said.
If the ONE VCU Master plan becomes reality, the Robertson School would move to a new interdisciplinary building that would share space with the physical sciences. Smith has some ideas for what he believes would embody a more modern learning space for communication students.
“When I walk into a school of communication, I should feel overwhelmed by media. Because that’s really what media is some fashions,” Smith said. “We’re talking about what artistic expression can be represented through the idea of media, multimedia -- maybe by that time virtual reality [or] augmented reality -- it’s really exciting to think about… But my big thing is when students come here, they should feel inspired.”