Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum

DIRECTOR'S WELCOME

The Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum at the beautiful campus of the University of Louisiana at Lafayette hopes to excite, educate and entertain you with its outstanding exhibitions and collections. As Acadiana’s foremost museum of fine art, the Hilliard seeks to serve our diverse population by realizing our vision of bridging university and community, art and education, generations and cultures. This museum has invigorated our unique region for over 40 years through the utilization of UL Lafayette’s intellectual and creative assets. I hope that you will use these assets by visiting the Museum frequently to explore the many different experiences and artistic endeavors that we have to offer.

Lance S. Harris

The Paul and Lulu Hilliard University Art Museum is a dynamic, education-oriented museum that serves as a center for interdisciplinary learning. It enriches the University of Louisiana at Lafayette's educational mission to a traditional liberal arts and sciences education. The museum seeks to be a tool from which students and scholars may advance knowledge, cultivate aesthetic sensibility, and improve the material conditions of humankind. The museum seeks to achieve these goals through its commitment to collect, preserve, research, interpret, instruct, and present significant works of art and design from all periods of history. Varied programming is designed to meet the educational and cultural needs of Louisiana's highly diverse population and to foster intellectual discourse among faculty, students, staff, and our community.

The Permanent Collection

The museum's collection consists of 18th through 21st century European, Asian and American art works. Selections from the permanent collection are on view on a rotating basis. In addition to the permanent collection, the 11,000 sq. ft. of gallery space features changing exhibitions of regional, national and international art.

Built in 1967 by A. Hays Town, A.I.A., (Class of 1922, b. June 17, 1903, Baton Rouge, Louisiana d. January 6, 2005) on donated property by Mr. and Mrs. Maurice Heymann. The University's original Art Center was designed after the 1812 Hermitage Plantation in Darrow, Louisiana. The building is completely surrounded by 24 Doric columns. Which were laid in the original Greek revival manner and made of pie-shaped bricks and covered with plaster, the traditional method of finished columns. The bricks were specially made and laid in a circle reducing by one at each third of the way up the column. This method called entasis produces a slight narrowing of the vertical column.

Originally the exterior was highlighted by the unusual pale pink color, an authentic reproduction of a color that was popular in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries in colonial Louisiana and was used on many houses and public buildings. Made by crushing old brick and mixing the brick dust with the paint base. The softly glowing pink would fade to the desired color in a few years. The building is still referred to this day as the pink elephant by many.

The staircase railing, newel post, and 225,000 bricks were salvaged from Martin Hall; the University's administration building which was demolished in 1963 and replaced by a new building bearing the same name. Additional reused material included cypress flooring from an early New Orleans convent, French slate tiles used for the original roofing, which entered into the port of New Orleans as ballast in sailing ships.

Louisiana Cypress in the library room was finished in the traditional hand rubbed manner using a combination of lye, vinegar, and a final coating of beeswax. Hot beeswax was also applied to the traditional pattern brick flooring used in the building gave a permanent finish to the surface. The empire style sunburst motif on the library fireplace was hand carved by a local craftsman from Breaux Bridge, Louisiana. Craftsmen using wood and tin molds applied traditional plaster cornices on the first floor.