The Tarble family has been donating to the Tarble Arts Center since they founded it in the early 1900s, and this year they are donating $3 million to the center.

The museum was named after Newton E. Tarble after he made a $1 million donation that made the existence of the center possible.

The Tarble family created a foundation and since the 1970s has donated a total of nearly $18 million to support the arts at Eastern.

Michael Watts, the director of the Tarble, said $1 million is going to be used to endow the director position.

“In future years proceeds from this endowment in the Eastern Foundation will be used to help pay for the director’s salary,” he said.

$1.2 million will be used to expand and renovate parts of the Tarble.

“This will expand and enhance education and outreach programs,” he said.

This will benefit both the campus and the greater East Central Illinois communities, he said.

Watts said the remaining fund money, which is about $800,000, will be used to create an endowment in the Eastern Foundation.

He said the proceeds from this endowment will help to pay the salary for staff to help administer the education and outreach programs conducted in the expanded and renovated facilities.

Watts said the money will go toward renovating the meeting room, which will become a new, larger and more accessible classroom.

Along with this project, it will transform the current Tarble classroom into an Open Collection Learning Laboratory.

“(The laboratory) will be used to better serve Eastern students and faculty and enhance other activities having to do with Tarble’s art collections and exhibitions,” he said.

Watts said because of the current increase in public school class sizes, the current Tarble classroom is too small to properly accommodate the students for the many of the museum’s programs.

“Creating a new classroom will solve this problem and make it possible to update and upgrade the facility,” he said. “This will make it easier to offer non-credit classes and workshops that are open to the public.”

Watts added turning its current classroom into a learning lab would make it possible for there to be a controlled space for a study of collection objects.  He said this is a trend among other university museums to have these spaces available for students.

“This transformed collections treatment space would also provide the Tarble staff a secure art treatment area, which is an issue that will become more acute as the Tarble moves to a higher level of the exhibitions presented,” Watts said.

Stephanie White can be reached at 581-2812 or at [email protected].