Finance and Administration

Prominently located at the corner of 15th Street and Washington Way, the Patricia Valian Reser Center for the Creative Arts will serve as a highly visible entrance to campus — emphasizing the university’s commitment to the arts and to a culture of creativity.

The 49,000-square-foot building will be a center for performing arts classes, programs and performances on the Corvallis campus, integrating programs in music, theater and the visual arts. The project will add educational space and state-of-the-art technologies for classes, programs and performances. In addition to its campus role, PRAx will be a statewide portal to the arts, enabling collaboration with public school systems throughout the state and ensuring that all Oregonians have better access and exposure to the arts.

The new facility will feature a 500-seat, acoustically superior concert hall that doubles as a classroom, along with a smaller, black box performance space that can be configured in multiple ways for theater productions, rehearsals and teaching. Backstage and support space will be integrated throughout the center to support arts productions and break down barriers between teaching, rehearsal and performance. Art gallery space will feature secure, dramatically lit spaces with appropriate climate control for displaying Oregon State’s art collections and featuring cutting-edge art shows.

The project will also include a renovation to the adjacent Anderson and Keeling Memorial Target Range, which will turn this historic building into classroom and rehearsal space.