The Weaver Gallery at Bethel: an institution course

Named for the founding professor · housed 1996 · permanent collection 2018

The name: The gallery carries the name of the college's founding fine-arts professor, and the naming is documented at the moment it became permanent: when Raymond Weaver's family gave his glass collection to Bethel, the Beacon reported the gift was made "to serve as its permanent collection in the Weaver Art Gallery (named for Weaver)." The gallery is the one room in the city's art record named for a teacher rather than a donor or a subject.

The building: The gallery stands in the Everest-Rohrer Chapel/Fine Arts Center, completed in 1996 and named for the college's founders Quinton Everest and Seth Rohrer — Bethel's catalogues describe the building as housing the Weaver Art Gallery alongside its 880-seat auditorium. The college's separate Art Center holds the working studios (the main studio for drawing, painting and design, and the ceramics studio), so the gallery's room is an exhibition room in a chapel-and-fine-arts building, not a studio annex.

The exhibition course: The gallery is in documented operation by February 2010, when the Beacon covered the Juried Student Art Exhibit of 20 February 2010 — organized by the visual art professor Suzanne Mauro and already "in its third year," which puts the annual juried course running from about 2008. The twelfth annual juried student show followed on 15 February 2019. Faculty work hangs in the same room: Mauro's own ceramics filled the gallery 7 September – 4 October 2013. The senior art shows, the department's capstone exhibitions, were split into two groups from March 2019 as the program's numbers grew, and the course continues into the present decade — a Susan Moore photography exhibition ran to 17 November 2023, and the banked Arts file carries the gallery's 2025 season (Chad Jay's Via Crucis, 31 January – 5 April 2025, with weekday public hours of 10 a.m. to 8 p.m. in the university's announcement, admission free) and the Mosaic Northern Indiana exhibition of November 2025.

The turning point of 2018: In September 2018 the gallery stopped being only a room exhibitions pass through. The Raymond Weaver Glass Exhibition opened with the "Remembering Ray" evening of 14 September 2018, and the family's gift made Weaver's own collection — American glass across its kinds, Sandwich glass, Depression glass, pattern glass and American Brilliant cut glass among them — the gallery's permanent collection, in the university magazine's words: "The glass will be the permanent collection of the Weaver Gallery." A teaching gallery acquired a founding collection, and the collection is the founder's.

The move of 2020–21: In the pandemic years the art department itself moved into the gallery's building: the Beacon records the department relocated into the lower level of the Everest-Rohrer center (its rooms numbered FA 150 and the Mac Lab FA 113), while ceramics teaching moved off campus entirely, held at the South Bend Museum of Art — South Bend's institution, boundary-printed here — under Kari Black. The gallery, the department and the chapel now share one roof, where before the department had kept its own Art Center across the campus.

Present state: The Weaver Gallery stands as a working teaching gallery: free, open on weekday hours through the college's exhibition season, showing the juried student course, the split senior shows, faculty exhibitions and touring regional shows in turn, with a glass permanent collection named for the man who taught the college's first art students in the building's predecessor rooms. It is the closest thing to an art museum the city has — a university gallery, at university size, and printed at that size.

Sources:

1. Bethel Beacon, "Raymond Weaver Glass Collection Unveiling," September 2018 — the gallery named for Weaver; the family gift as its permanent collection; the glass's kinds.
2. Bethel University magazine, Fall 2018 — "The glass will be the permanent collection of the Weaver Gallery"; the 14 September 2018 opening.
3. Bethel University catalogues (SmartCatalog, 2022–23 through 2026–27 editions) — Everest-Rohrer Chapel/Fine Arts Center completed 1996, named for Quinton Everest and Seth Rohrer, housing the Weaver Art Gallery and the 880-seat auditorium; the separate Art Center and its studios.
4. Bethel Beacon, 2010–2023 — the juried student exhibit of 20 February 2010 ("in its third year," organized by Suzanne Mauro); the twelfth annual juried show, 15 February 2019; Mauro's ceramics exhibition, 7 September – 4 October 2013; the senior shows split from March 2019; the Susan Moore photography exhibition to 17 November 2023; the department's 2020–21 relocation into Everest-Rohrer's lower level and the ceramics move to the South Bend Museum of Art under Kari Black.
5. Arts (banked) — the gallery's 2025 season and hours, cross-referenced, not retold.