Kristina Cinquegrana, a Providence graphic designer who interned at the galleries and graduated from URI last year, says “We’re really feeling the cuts of the galleries. And as an alum, I feel really angry because the galleries played such an integral part in my education.”
Tourigny, who has worked at URI for a decade, says, “I mourn the loss of the program for the state. But I think the big problem is the state, not the university. I have no answers to fix that problem, but I don’t think the university had many choices. I think the devastating and egregious amount they had to cut from the program was so broad. When you see them cutting from athletics programs you know it’s egregious.”
She thinks it will take the state 10 to 15 years to recover from these cuts.
“It’s catastrophic to the soul of the state . . . There needs to be protest. There needs to be a clear articulation of what this means to the art community of Rhode Island,” says Patrick Logan, a professor in URI’s communication department and a close friend of Tolnick Champa. “The state’s investment in higher education is a third of what it was 35 years ago. That leaves the question: is higher education that much less important than it used to be?”
Rosenbaum says, “The University of Rhode Island, like many universities around the country, serves as a cultural center for their community. The programs that are cut back -- the galleries and “Great Performances” program -- are community assets. They’re in large part about the role the university plays as a community partner.
“The way our state is laid out, the University of Rhode Island is a cultural center for the South County area. So that reduces the community cultural programming or the southern part of the state . . . Once you institutionalize something and then you lose it, it’s hard to build it back. It takes greater effort to rebuild it, to justify its worth. You almost have to reinvent it.”
