According to Garcia, who oversees installations in Mather’s Three Columns Gallery, six exhibits have gone up this year, each lasting a little over a month.

But not many of them feature student work. The last student installation at Three Columns was a collection of work by VES concentrator Chris Parlato ’03 in December.

“I try to encourage the artists I know in the house to get them to display their work here,” Garcia says. “Ideally, we’d have student shows up every week, but if a student wants to curate an exhibit on behave of an initiative or organization, we welcome that too.”

It’s a unique space. True to its name, the gallery is a group of three columns at the entrance to Mather’s dining hall, not in the tradition of whitewashed gallery walls.

“It is a very interactive and playful space. We’ve seen that students have liked to display 3-dimensional work here, because you can walk around it and see it from all sides and angles,” Garcia says.

Still, while exhibits are always up in the space, few students have expressed interest in displaying their work in Three Columns this year, prompting Garcia and other tutors to search for submissions in local galleries and studios.

Garcia says the non-conventional design of the space explains the lower demand.

“It’s not as big or versatile as Adams, and some people love that while others feel the challenge of it,” Garcia says.

Many of the pieces displayed this year were designed specifically for the gallery, which is well-suited for three-dimensional work.

Garcia says that the gallery, which was formally a vacant vestibule, has helped to generate appreciation for the arts in Mather—despite the sparsity of student exhibits.

According to Office for the Arts (OFA) Program Director Cathleen McCormick, student work may also be displayed in the heavily-transversed Holyoke Arcade in the near future.

Some students, such as art history concentrator Sarah Lehrer-Graiwer ’05, think that the best way to increase the limited space is to convert or use existing public spaces.

“My goal is to set up centrally-located exhibition spaces, where a lot of foot traffic will generate new innovative art,” Lehrer-Graiwer says.

After spending time on the campuses of art schools, Lehrer-Graiwer says the free exchange of creative ideas is missing at Harvard.

“Harvard’s a great place, but there’s an inadequate respect for the arts here,” she says. “The fact that there’s no dance department, no theater concentration shows the profound need for more attention to be given to the art community.”