The building opened for classes on September 13th, 1999.
Awards
"1999 Association of General Contractors of Vermont - Best Builders Award" has been awarded to Barr & Barr Construction
"Lab of the Year 2000" by Cahner's R&D Magazine. This is a major award, probably the most coveted facility honor in the field of science and engineering. For the first time this year, the award was divided into "new" and "renovated" categories due to the large number of entries. Bicentennial Hall, of course, is the award winner of the new facility competition. This award "recognizes the best new and renovated laboratories that combine all aspects of the building into a superior working environment. A new and renovated laboratory should have an appropriate site, an appealing architecture, and a functional arrangement that encourages innovation and communication between its scientists, engineers, technicians, and staff members. In addition, the facility should provide for the efficient use of energy, the safety of personnel and experiments, convenient ingress and egress for both humans (including handicapped) and materials, and for humane treatment of animal test subjects."
Smog Sculpture
SMOG by American architect, painter, and sculptor Tony Smith (1912-80) is the largest and most complex work by this artist ever constructed in permanent materials. Installed to the southeast of Bicentennial Hall on a patterned surface of bluestones, this monumental sculpture measures approximately 80' wide, 60' deep, and 7' high.
The Committee on Art in Public Places (composed of trustees, administrators, faculty, students, and members of the community) commissioned and sited this sculpture, the first acquisition under the "1% for art" program established by the Board of Trustees and entrusted to the Committee.
Smith was recognized within the art world as an artist, architect, and teacher in the 1950s, but he achieved wide-spread, international recognition only after he began to make and exhibit sculpture. A solo exhibition at the Wadsworth Atheneum (Hartford, CT) and a group exhibition called Primary Structures at The Jewish Museum (New York), both in 1966, were crucial moments in his career. Numerous other exhibitions followed, both in the United States and abroad. In 1998 the Museum of Modern Art (New York) organized a retrospective, recognizing and reasserting Smith's stature.
Smith was an exact contemporary of Jackson Pollock, but his art was never based on controlled accidents like the work of Abstract Expressionists. His complex sculptures are logical and systemic. MOONDOG (1964), SMOKE (1967), SMOG (1969-70), and SMUG (1973) all share a common vocabulary of complex volumes that seem to have come into being by efflorescense, possessing both the logic of crystals and the passion of living forms. John M.Hunisak Department of History of Art and Architecture, Chair, Committee on Art in Public Places
John M.Hunisak
Department of History of Art and Architecture, Chair, Committee on Art in Public Places