Judith Tolnick Champa, director of the Fine Arts Center at URI, was on the job in this 1998 picture of an exhibit that included a Quonset hut.

Journal files / MICHAEL J.B. KELLY

SOUTH KINGSTOWN — Within weeks, the University of Rhode Island Fine Arts Center galleries will mostly be empty of artwork.

The galleries, and URI’s Great Performances program, are being cut as part of a $17.8-million reduction in state funding for the university. The College of Arts and Sciences, under which the Fine Arts Galleries and Great Performances fall, was asked to cut its budget by $2.7 million. Eliminating the two programs would result in a $325,000 saving, notes a statement from URI’s Department of Communication and Marketing.

Reaction to the news has resulted in the formation of a Web site, Friends of the Fine Arts Galleries, as well as a Facebook group with almost 500 members.

A “Save the Gallery” meeting was held yesterday, as well as last week, organized by South Kingstown’s Marc Levitt, during which those upset with the loss of the gallery and its director discussed ways to voice their opposition, including, according to meeting minutes, a rally, march, sit-in and protest.

“I hate to see the arts the first thing marginalized at a university such as this,” said Judith Tolnick Champa, Fine Arts Center galleries director for almost 20 years. Tolnick said she was “astounded” when told by Winifred Brownell, dean of the College of Arts and Sciences, just a few days after a successful art fundraiser, that her job, and the galleries, would be eliminated.

President Robert L. Carothers said yesterday cuts are being made “across the campus, and none of it is fun.”

While the question can be asked why cut the art galleries, Carothers asked: “Why did the legislature cut $17 million out of our budget? I’m not happy about any of this.”

Asked whether he felt a conflict with his past as a poet and the elimination of art galleries he said, “Right now, I’m more of a money manager than a poet.”

TOLNICK CHAMPA said that while she was expecting budget cuts, she had no warning of the total loss of the gallery and her job, and had actually “in good faith formulated a complete calendar for the fall.”

While she has informed one artist about the cancellation (“he was outraged”), Tolnick Champa said the deans will inform the other artists.

In the same building, Roxanna Tourigny, who has coordinated the Great Performances program for a decade, said this week she was “mourning the loss of this program I’ve been coordinating for 10 years.”

She, too, has had to cancel informal agreements with performers.

“I think it’s a great loss for South County,” Tourigny said. She said she made it a practice to go into local schools before performances to connect the music, dancing and cultural performance to the curriculum. She held similar programs in local senior centers, offering advance information on performers such as the St. Lawrence String Quartet, Chicago City Limits, an improvisational group, operatic groups and dance companies.

“Other schools don’t have this deep outreach,” said Tolnick Champa, who has received dozens of letters of support, personally and by way of the newly-established Friends of the Fine Art Center galleries Web site, www.uri.edu/artgalleries/save_the_galleries.

PROF. PATRICK LOGAN, of the Department of Communication Studies, has helped in getting the Web site established.

“I’m hoping we will be able to express the real impact to both the public and the students of the elimination of the gallery and the position,” he said, referring to Tolnick Champa’s job. He said the Friends of the Fine Art Center galleries were meeting yesterday “to pick up on our ideas.” He said they hoped to “stay the executioner.”

In the university statement, Donald H. DeHayes, provost and vice president of academic affairs, said in reviewing programs, the main goal “was to protect the delivery of our curriculum to our students. Protection of curriculum and the overall student experience at URI is paramount. Programs that provide enrichment to the university and to the wider community, while valued, had to be put on hold for the time being.”

Brownell said she “was heartbroken” to have to make the cuts, and acknowledged outreach into the community by Tolnick Champa and Tourigny. But she said that “each program in the college, each program in the university is facing cuts. We serve students first.”

“Judith Tolnick is not recognized as the extreme talent that she is,” Logan said in reply to that logic. “The university’s rationale is that they are focusing on the curriculum. She is a key part of that curriculum.

“This is not the kind of thing they should be cutting. They’re not cutting the football program.”

Carothers noted that $800,000 was cut from the athletic program, resulting in the loss of four sports, men’s tennis, men’s swimming, field hockey and gymnastics.

ACCORDING TO the university statement, responsibility for the galleries is being shifted to the Department of Art and Art History. A letter to President Carothers signed by both the chairwoman of the art department, Barbara Pagh, who will soon be going on sabbatical, and the interim chairman, Robert Dilworth, notes “the value of the Fine Arts Center galleries exceeds its modest budget, and we hope the decision to close them will be reconsidered.”

Pagh had an exhibit planned for the gallery in the fall of 2009, she said.

The department has 185 art majors, she said, “but it is not only art students who make use of the gallery,” citing use by students from other departments, and Honors Colloquium students who are sometimes required to view gallery shows as part of their course work.

“The galleries really are tied to the curriculum,” she said.

“I see the gallery as a forum and a laboratory,” said Tolnick Champa. “It is more than the frosting, it’s the cake. What people see here they won’t see anywhere else. These are not ready-made exhibits.”

Audiences, she said, came from Boston and New York, but she also made significant progress in terms of bonding with the local community.

“You can’t buy that. It’s called good will.”

ALEXANDRA BROCHES, president of Wakefield’s Hera Gallery, said the loss of the URI gallery will be a big one in South County.

Fellow Hera member and an original founder, Roberta Richman, of South Kingstown, said she was shocked at the announcement.

The URI gallery, Richman said, is “a cultural mecca for South County. When you take these kinds of programs away, it’s so hard to bring them back.”

afleming@projo.com