Professor Emeritus of Visual Arts Arthur Skinner ’72 received a big surprise on Oct .10 at a reception in his honor. Photo by Penh Alicandro ’22
On Friday evening, Oct. 10, Eckerd College honored Professor Emeritus of Visual Arts Arthur Skinner ’72 during a surprise reception attended by close to 100 guests—including his family, close friends and members of the Eckerd College Board of Trustees.
Eckerd President James Annarelli and Board Chair Ian Johnson ’89 announced the establishment of the Arthur Skinner ’72 Endowment for Creative Arts and the naming of the main gallery of The Helmar and Enole Nielsen Center for Visual Arts in his honor as the Arthur N. Skinner ’72 Gallery.
“The new Skinner Endowment for Creative Arts has raised more than $315,000 from 57 gifts, creating a lasting legacy in recognition of Arthur’s extraordinary career and enduring influence on generations of students,” Annarelli said. The dedication inside the newly renamed gallery was made even more meaningful, Annarelli added, by the presence of Arthur’s wife and family.
“Arthur has spent 50 years, not including his time as a student, serving this institution as a teacher, administrator and artist,” Annarelli continued. “When he announced his retirement [in May], Eckerd alumni and friends who had learned from or worked with Arthur asked us how they could honor his legacy at the College.
Skinner clutched his laptop as President James Annarelli announced the endowment.
“Thus the Arthur Skinner ’72 Endowment for Creative Arts was born. The endowment will provide annual financial support to the Creative Arts Collegium and create a legacy in honor of Arthur’s long Eckerd tenure and impact on countless students. Congratulations, Arthur, and thank you for all you have done for our beloved college.”
As Annarelli spoke, the guest of honor stood quietly nearby, hugging his trusty laptop. And then he was handed a microphone. “I’m speechless,” Skinner said in a voice soft as cotton. “I can’t thank you all enough.”
Donors gave $315,000 to the endowed fund named after Skinner.
Skinner had thought he was going to the gallery to simply take down an art exhibition, explained Nicole Manuel ’98, the College’s Creative Arts Collegium coordinator and collection manager.
The honors graduate has known him since she arrived at Eckerd as a visual arts student in 1994. Manuel had returned to her alma mater in 2018 to serve as the College’s visual arts administrative assistant before she moved to her current role.
“The faculty show was going to be installed over the weekend, and Arthur likes to get started on taking the shows down Friday evening,” she explained. “I told him the Board of Trustees was having an event there that would end at 6:00 and that I would help him take it down around 6:15. Meanwhile, I enlisted [his son] Joe to ask for Arthur’s help with a project in the Printmaking Studio. I knew that the opportunity to help Joe would be irresistible to Arthur and would occupy him in a windowless room while the guests arrived.
“As for the laptop, Arthur always has it with him. He does not and has never had a cellphone. He uses email like a phone. Joe teased him about clutching the laptop like an ‘emotional support animal,’ and Arthur said he was just so stunned by the whole thing that he didn’t realize he had it.”
That, everyone who knows him will likely agree, is Arthur Skinner.
As the current campus curator, Skinner will mount his next Nielsen Center show in the gallery bearing his name.
Born and raised in Decatur, Georgia, Skinner holds a Bachelor of Arts degree in visual arts from Florida Presbyterian College (now Eckerd College) and a Master of Visual Arts in printmaking from Georgia State University. He has taught courses in printmaking, drawing and photography at Eckerd since 1976. In the past five decades, he has participated in exhibitions across the country, including several at the Morean Arts Center in St. Petersburg, such as a joint exhibition with his son Joe earlier this year. His work can be found in the permanent collections of the Brooklyn Museum (New York), the Knoxville Museum of Art and Eckerd College.
The Skinner Family is an Eckerd family. His wife, Katrina Van Tassel, graduated from Eckerd in 1980. Their eldest son, William Skinner ’12, wed Becca Cassidy ’13, while youngest son, Joe Skinner, graduated from Eckerd in 2014 and is a new instructor of visual arts at the College.
“I get everything I have from him,” Joe says of his father and his education as a teaching artist. “Especially the joy of seeing students’ work. Anytime I’m feeling down, the students always bring me back. He’s the same way.”
The Skinners have lived for decades in St. Petersburg’s Driftwood neighborhood, a small, hidden-away place with moss-covered oaks surrounding bungalows built in the 1930s and ’40s. “When I was young, I put a lot of stress on my dad,” Joe admits, “and I remember him saying to me, ‘I’m learning right now too. This is the first time I’ve been a parent.’”
“Throughout the years, he’s been a rock. He’s helped me find my own voice, and he gave me a sense of how to teach. He also gave me a list of motivational things he would say to his students. My mother and father were both amazing teachers.
“My dad would never tell you what to do. But he would tell you just enough, the perfect amount, so that you could have that moment of discovery on your own. Teaching at the College has been his life and his legacy. And it will keep on going through the students he has sent out into the world.”
It seems everyone who has spent some time in the Nielsen Center has an Arthur Skinner story. “I really wanted to spend a semester in Italy, and Arthur made it happen for me,” says Kari Hoblitzell, who graduated with high honors from Eckerd in 1996 with a degree in visual arts. “He set me up with a host family in Florence, arranged for me to attend a weekly studio art class, and designed multiple independent studies unique to me and for which he was my mentor and instructor. It was an experience of a lifetime and truly shaped who I am today.”
But perhaps no one on Eckerd’s campus knows him as well as Manuel. “He’s very quiet and soft-spoken,” she said, “but he has a wicked sense of humor. And I’ve never known someone who works as tirelessly and who is so kind and endlessly encouraging. He’s also ridiculously talented in everything he does. Have you ever seen drawings more detailed than Arthur’s?
“His students say, ‘Skinner never sleeps,’ because he answers their emails at 1 in the morning. No one does that. But he won’t send me an email until after 9 a.m. What words can possibly express that? And grades. I’ve never seen anybody agonize over the difference between an A and a B. For days, until the very deadline. And he always errs on the side of generosity. You won’t meet a lot of people in your life whose intentions are just … pure.
“Arthur probably won’t see himself as worthy of this recognition,” Manuel admits. “But I see the endowment and the renaming of the gallery as lasting monuments to all of the effort that Arthur has put into everything he has done here. He deserves this more than anyone.”
And though his title has changed from Eckerd professor to professor emeritus of visual arts, Arthur agreed to stay on as the gallery director for at least a couple of years.
“He is the embodiment of what we are trying to do here as an institution, a manifestation of the mission of the College,” Manuel adds. “There will never be another person who has dedicated his life to this place the way Arthur has.”
A few days after the event, Skinner reflected on what had taken place. “I knew the trustees would be gathering in the gallery for a reception,” he said, “and I was grateful that they would have the opportunity to see the exhibition that I had curated from the College’s permanent collection, one that I had titled Times of Trouble because I felt that it was an important exhibition, and relevant in a variety of ways. And of the 50 works on display, 17 were made by our founding visual arts faculty.
“The secrecy surrounding the event was orchestrated so well—and I was totally caught off guard. Even when I noted what seemed a sudden hush of voices as Nicole and I walked down the gallery corridor towards the Main Gallery, I had no idea what was about to happen. And when we entered the gallery, I was suddenly greeted with rousing applause and cheers from so many familiar faces—it was an OMG moment.
“Then I was deeply moved to learn of the many generous gifts made to the Creative Arts Collegium in my name, and then to realize that a space so widely regarded as such a beautiful gallery would become associated with my name was an unexpected honor. And I was blown away, and indeed words failed me.
“To be honest, had I been given the opportunity, I would have respectfully declined the naming of the gallery after me and ask[ed] that they please consider instead any one of the number of trustees and trustee emeriti who have so generously supported what we have done in visual arts for decades now. The list is long.
“It’s truly been a privilege to be a member of the Eckerd community for so many years.”
