For students studying architecture at UT San Antonio, art is not confined to a museum or gallery. It is part of the environment where they learn, work and spend their days.
That idea is at the heart of On the Walls: Art in Architectural Space, a new lunchtime series launched this past spring by the UT San Antonio Art Collection and the School of Architecture + Planning. The series brings artists and architecture students together to explore the artwork around them and consider how art and architecture shape the spaces people experience every day.
The inaugural session featured local artist Mark Hogensen, MFA ’90, whose work is part of the university’s permanent collection. About 35 to 40 students and faculty attended the session at One Riverwalk Place, where Hogensen discussed his work and creative process and reflected on the relationship between art, architecture and the spaces where art is experienced.
“After teaching at the college level for 30 years, I’ve come to understand the importance of listening to the questions students ask, to the ideas they bring into the room, and to the unexpected directions a conversation can take. I consider myself a lifelong learner,” said Hogensen. “When I’m with students, I often learn as much from them as they learn from me, if not more. There is always something new to discover, even in the things we think we already know.”
Hogensen’s background in both art and architecture made him a natural choice to launch the series.
Arturo Infante Almeida, director and curator of the UT San Antonio Art Collection, partnered with Michelangelo Sabatino, PhD, director of the School of Architecture + Planning, to launch the On the Walls series.
“I created On the Walls: Art in Architectural Space to bring art and architecture together and strengthen the connection between the artists, their work, and the spaces we experience every day,” Almeida said. “Over time, I hope the series continues to grow, bringing more artists into the conversation and giving our students and community a deeper understanding of the art around them.”
Learning through the built environment
The series builds on the school’s move to One Riverwalk Place in the heart of downtown.
For Sabatino, the new location offered more than a new home for the architecture program. It created an opportunity to use the building — and its place within downtown San Antonio — as a platform for students to engage with the city and the art within it, he said.
Paintings, photographs, art tiles and other media in One Riverwalk Place were selected with the architectural environment and students in mind.
A series of photographs by renowned photographer Elliott Erwitt, for example, offers students a different way to think about observation and framing. Students routinely use their phones to photograph buildings, Sabatino said, but Erwitt’s work demonstrates that photography involves intentional choices about what to see, where to stand and how to frame a subject.
For Sabatino, those connections are fundamental to an architectural education.
“I think creativity need not be in silos,” he said. “There is art in architecture as well. And there is architecture in art.”
That philosophy has deep roots. Sabatino trained as an architect in Italy before earning a doctorate in art and architectural history, and he sees the historical relationship between the disciplines as something worth bringing into students’ contemporary education.
Beyond the classroom
Hogensen’s work illustrates the possibilities.
His 58-foot tiled mural outside San Pedro I is part of the university’s permanent collection and is just a short walk from One Riverwalk Place. When discussing the mural with students, Hogensen described it as a “layering of ideas,” explaining how geometric structures, colors and shapes work together within the project’s parameters.
Inside One Riverwalk Place, two of Hogensen’s works — an untitled ink perspective drawing and A Well-Oiled Machine — are displayed in the 10th-floor lobby. Placed across from one another, the works give students an opportunity to see different aspects of his practice, from line and perspective to color, geometry and composition.
The goal extends beyond displaying art in the building. It is to encourage students to stop, look and ask questions.
Sabatino has noticed students doing exactly that — pausing in the lobby to look at the artwork as they move through their day.
The series continues
On the Walls will continue this fall with the arrival of artist Ernesto Ibanez on Wednesday, Oct. 14, from noon to 1 p.m. Ibanez’s artwork is on display on the fourth floor of One Riverwalk Place, giving students the chance to encounter his work in their everyday learning environment before hearing directly from him about his practice.
Ibanez will discuss his work and creative process and explore the relationship between sculpture and architectural space. Ibanez’s artwork has also been featured in the 2024 and 2025 UT San Antonio Gala & Art Sale, while Hogensen’s work has been part of the event in previous years and will once again be featured in this year’s sale.
By bringing artists into the spaces where architecture students learn — and by connecting those works to the broader downtown environment — On the Walls offers students a chance to experience art not as something separate from architecture but as part of the same creative conversation.
