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St. Olaf to dedicate Dittmann Center during weekend that weaves together art and life

By Nancy J. Ashmore
April 29, 2002

NORTHFIELD, Minn. -It is named for a musician, art historian and language instructor, a man who has delighted in bridging the gaps among disciplines and among peoples and countries. It was designed to have a similar impact, to be a place where the arts and artists could come together in synergistic ways to the benefit of all.

"It" is Dittmann Center, an exciting facility that St. Olaf College will formally dedicate on Friday, May 3, during a 4 p.m. ceremony that is free and open to the public.

Dittmann Center, the new home of the St. Olaf Art and Art History Department and the Dance Department, opened in September. The result of an imaginative renovation of the former St. Olaf Center, it provides attractive and safe studios and classrooms - as well as comfortable spaces in which to view art and dance.

"The Dittmann Center is a new building sculpted, in a sense, out of an already existing one," says Jill Ewald, director of the Flaten Art Museum located there. "The center's a place where discovery, exploration and creation takes place, where industry interweaves with scholarship."

Dance had been operating out of five different spaces, notes Heather Klopchin, assistant professor of dance. "The new space not only brings together the members of our department and pulls the two disciplines together," she says. "It also clusters the arts in the heart of the campus."

The dedication is part of a weekend filled with events and exhibits designed to weave together art and life. Among these is a lecture on Edvard Munch at 2 p.m. Friday by Reidar Dittmann, the professor emeritus after whom the building is named. Dittmann, who spent 1942-45 in Buchenwald Concentration Camp for helping the Norwegian Resistance Movement sabotage a merchant ship, came to St. Olaf to major in music and stayed to teach Norwegian, art and much more.

He joined the St. Olaf faculty even before he graduated with two degrees in music in 1947, becoming an instructor in the Norwegian department in 1946. In 1965 he was appointed the college's first director of international studies and began developing programs in Europe, Africa and Asia. In 1975 he joined the art and art history faculty and became director of Steensland Gallery.

Dittmann lectures on the Holocaust and Lutheran-Jewish relations, was an official participant in the opening of the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and is included in the museum's list of Gentile concentration camp survivors. In 1978 he received the St. Olav Medal from the King of Norway.

The dedication ceremony will take place on the east portico of the Dittmann Center (Wagner-Bundgaard Studio in the event of rain). During the hors d'oeuvres receptions that follow, visitors will be able to explore the facility and the rooms within it that honor the men and women who contributed to the growth of art and dance at St. Olaf.

Those include Ann Wagner and Axel Bungaard, the wife and husband who helped establish dance as a major at the college, and Arnold Flaten, the alumnus who founded the Art Department.

Companydance, the college's modern dance ensemble, will perform two concerts in Kelsey Theater during the weekend: at 8 p.m. Friday, May 3 (followed by a dessert reception in the Groot Student Gallery in the Dittmann Center) and at 8 p.m. Saturday, May 4. Tickets are available through Kelsey Theater Box Office, (507) 646-8987.

On Sunday, May 5, from 2 to 3:30 p.m. faculty and alumni will present dance exhibitions, to be staged throughout the center, titled "From Then Into Now."

The talents of the college's studio artists will be showcased on Saturday as well - during a coffee reception in the Student Gallery from 9 to 10 a.m., during the "From Turpentine to Tutus" open studio sessions from 10 a.m. to noon and during a mid-afternoon senior art show and gallery talk.

St. Olaf College, a national leader among liberal arts institutions, fosters the development of mind, body and spirit. It is a residential college in Northfield, Minn., and affiliated with the Evangelical Lutheran Church in America (ELCA). The college provides personalized instruction and diverse learning environments, with more than two-thirds of its students participating in international studies.

Contact David Gonnerman at 507-786-3315 or gonnermd@stolaf.edu.