The University of Wisconsin-Madison School of Music has received a $25 million gift to help construct a new building featuring performance spaces and a large concert hall.
Plans for the building began in 2007 when the school received a $15 million donation from the family of an alumni in California. While the donation was sizable, school director Susan Cook said they didn’t know how they would reach the full $55.8 million needed for the entire project until the Mead Witter Foundation gave the school the quarter-million dollar gift.
“Nobody saw this coming,” she said.
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Cook said the gift sends a positive message about the arts.
“I don’t want the arts to become something that only happens at private institutions,” she said. “A gift like this says that the arts, and music in particular, belong at a public-supported land-grant institution like the University of Wisconsin at Madison.”
The building will be named the Hamel Music Center, and the music school will be renamed to the Mead Witter School of Music. Construction will commence in late 2016 and the building is set to open in 2018.
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