Rider art gallery no longer functional
By Hannah Newman
With its first and last piece sold for $65,000 in 2023, the Rider Art Gallery remains a pre-pandemic memory and its art is no longer up for sale, according to External Affairs Vice President Kristine Brown.
“It’s always been donated. Even a sculpture on campus … there’s one behind the library, there’s one over by Sweigert, they’re all donated and nothing’s been bought.”
The university has been collecting donations of artwork for the last 30 years. Many pieces of art are displayed around campus while others sit in storage, according to Harry Naar, a past art gallery director who retired in 2019.
“Despite its reputation as one of the top galleries in the tri-state area and despite the fact that it served as a valuable cultural asset to the students and the community, all the artwork hanging in the university was donated by artists after I created exhibits of their work at the art gallery,” Naar said in an email to The Rider News.
Although the artwork on campus holds great monetary value, it sits on campus for visual display despite the bump in liquidity the pieces could offer Rider if sold.
Prior to the pandemic, the university’s master plan included moving the art gallery to the Fine Arts building, however, COVID put those plans on hold until further notice, according to Brown.
“There were plans in the campus master plan, in maybe 2017, something like that, long before COVID for the art gallery to be moved over to the fine arts building … the lobby looks out onto the patio there,” Brown said. “But then, quite honestly, COVID happened, and a good majority of the campus master plan was put on hold because of COVID and that’s still the case today.”
Although the inner workings of the gallery are no longer a priority, with a new president on the horizon, the potential of seeing the art gallery move forward is a possibility, according to Brown.
“Now in 2025, we’ve got a new president coming on board … and usually the strategic planning process is followed by a campus master planning process. They sort of go hand in hand, one follows the other,” Brown said. “I have no idea if that’s really how it’s going to go, but presumably, that’s sort of how it goes when a new president comes up, or strategic planning process, and possibly the art gallery is a discussion at that point, but that’s several years away.”
