Star Store is the heart of the New Bedford arts world. How closing it hurts the community.

I am a 1982 graduate of the Swain School of Design, where I earned a BFA in printmaking, and a 1991 graduate of UMass Dartmouth’s College of Visual and Performing Arts, where I received an MFA in visual design. As a CVPA student, my studio was in the Purchase Street Building. The time I spent at the main campus was quite minimal, only going there to take the elective liberal art classes and to teach a few classes, as many grad students are tapped to do.

I met Elizabeth, the woman I would marry, in one of those classes. We moved to Vermont for about 16 years and returned to be closer to our aging parents and we quickly reentered the SouthCoast art community. Neither one of us ever attended a single class in the Star Store Building, but that doesn't mean it doesn’t matter to us.

We both have fond memories of it as children, riding on the elevators and eating lunch in the basement restaurant in what was then New Bedford’s equivalent of Macy’s or Bloomingdale’s.

College moving: UMass Dartmouth pulls the plug on arts program at New Bedford's Star Store

And in that building worked a number of former Swain instructors that transitioned in when it merged with the state university system in 1988.

And more importantly, it somehow contained the spirit of Swain and the Purchase Steet Building studios and even a bit of the old Group Six building on the main campus. And it was good. It was better than good. In the heart of the city, steps away from the Zeiterion Performing Arts Center, the Star Store and the Z became the yin and yang of the cultural community.

The intersection of Purchase and Union Streets and nearby blocks became an epicenter of student activity. Coffee, pastries, pizza, craft beer, soup and sandwiches, burgers, sushi, Mexican food and more sated the thirsts and appeased the hunger of the students, faculty, and the staff of the Star Store and all the visitors that came to the neighborhood to partake in the arts.

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For more than two decades, first Lasse Antonsen and later Viera Levitt were the curators of the University Art Gallery, and overseers of its adjacent spaces, the Crapo Gallery lobby, the student-run Gallery 244 and as well as other makeshift galleries.

I began writing art criticism and cultural commentary for The Standard-Times in 2014. My visits to the Star Store increased. I looked, I lingered, I loved. I’d leave and walk over to the Green Bean or the Pour Farm and randomly run into a friend or a colleague that I'd excitedly drag back to the Star Store to see some world-class art.

It ranged from the heady institutional installations of the conceptual artist Mark Dion to the charming cartoon etchings of Edward Gorey; from Anna Palakunnathu’s cross-cultural photo essays to the esoteric media artist Bill Seaman's applications of vinyl lettering in elevators and rest rooms, on pipes and over fire extinguishers; and from the amazing animal photography of Henry Horenstien to the urban commuter rail paintings of Mark Freedman, as full of longing as Tom Waits’s “Downtown Girl” but without the girl.

Pat Coomey Thornton’s “Moment to Moment.”  Amanda Means’ “Light Years.” Frank Poor’s “Residium.” Uli Brahmst’s “On Being a Woman.” John Havens Thornton’s abstracts. Marc St. Pierre’s studies in black-and-white. Exhibitions about politics, war, social issues, ecology, history, literature, all of life. And death. Frequent faculty shows. And every spring, shows celebrating the new MFA graduates.

And that last show, “Ira / 30 Years of Standing Still,” celebrating the late Ira Cohen, a longtime life model at the CVPA? It was supposed to be up until Sept. 3. The administration ordered it down well before that date. There were deadlines to be met, damn it.  How apropos that the last show celebrated a dead man and now the Star Store itself is dead.

Perhaps Amy Araujo, one of the artists in that exhibition, was sensing something when she did a charcoal drawing of Ira directly on the wall. And she wrote but a foot away: “nothing lasts forever.”

It certainly seems like a fait accompli. Almost 5,000 signatures have been added to a petition to “Save the Star Store.” By the time this article sees publication, there will be at least one potentially large protest. The politicians and the UMass leadership and the chancellor and the dean have failed the art students, the art community and New Bedford itself.

Closing shop: UMass Dartmouth Star Store art campus to close in downtown New Bedford

Everyone is waiting for the Hail Mary pass but Gov. Maura Healey doesn’t seem to be much of a quarterback.

Some of the art students will be working out of an empty Bed Bath & Beyond in a strip mall and they’re the lucky ones. Others will have classes in “customized modular housing” which is, of course, nothing but a double-wide trailer.

The loss of the Star Store also means the loss of the University Art Gallery, the best art exhibition space on the SouthCoast. Yes, there is a gallery in the CVPA building in North Dartmouth. It has a somewhat frumpy name: the CVPA Campus Gallery.

The University Art Gallery at the Star Store was open every weekend. In fact, it was only ever closed during the daytime on federal holidays and during pandemic restrictions or a blizzard. It was easily accessible to New Bedford residents. No need for a shuttle or a bus or trying to figure out where to park.

One does not walk by the CVPA Campus Gallery on the way to the theater or a concert or to grab a beer or a coffee or to a nice dinner and glance in the window and feel inspired to go in to check out the work. There will be no casual passersby who have their curiosity piqued and peek inside.

I wish I could say I didn’t see this coming. But the writing has been on the wall for years. And now, there’s no art on the wall.

This article originally appeared on The Herald News: UMass Star Store campus closing hurts New Bedford arts community