Art Department Receives $10,000 Paper Donation

Note: This article was published in March, 2019—the date attached to this article is incorrect.

The art department recently received a paper donation worth an estimated $10,000 from a parent of a freshman at Stuyvesant. The parent works for a company called Legion Paper. This donation is the first of its kind in Stuyvesant history.

The donation included several drawing pads and multiple types of paper, ranging from thin Japanese paper to thick watercolor paper. The new paper is of a better quality than the paper students have previously used. Paper is measured by weight per ream, and one ream is about 500 sheets of paper. The greater the weight of the paper, the thicker and more expensive it is because it can hold more water. Each ream of the new paper weighs about 275 to 300 pounds. For comparison, the paper the art department currently uses is generally around 60 to 90 pounds.

Having better paper will help students in art classes produce better results. “When I did my watercolor painting project, the paper came off because I painted it so many times. Having better paper can definitely help,” freshman Yuqing Wu said.

ARISTA helped the art department organize the donation. ARISTA members volunteered to help transport and sort the donated paper. They cleaned out the storage closet, removed old supplies, recycled paper that had been permanently bent or damaged by the sunlight, dusted the shelves, and reorganized the supplies. This cleared space for the new shipments of paper.

“We really received an enormous amount of paper and [though] clearing the storage room required a lot of manual labor, it was exciting to see the new resources we had for our art department,” senior and ARISTA volunteer Lois Wu said.

The art department was especially grateful for the ARISTA members’ assistance. “We could not have accomplished setting up the closet with new paper if it was not for their help,” art teacher Jeanie Chu said.

Because they do not have to spend money on new paper, the art department will now be able to divert its budget toward other art materials. “Sometimes people [lose] supplies. When we [were working on] the portrait project, some of the sharpies were lost,” Yuqing Wu said.

The new paper will also help the art department thrive and is a welcome change from the norm, where the majority of funding usually goes toward STEM-based classes and extracurriculars. “It was really exciting to see that […] the arts would continue to flourish at a school typically known as a ‘STEM’ school,” Lois Wu said.

The donation will ultimately help the art department support students in their artistic endeavors by giving them access to both better quality paper and other resources as a result. “It’s really not typical for art students to have access to this type of paper,” Chu said. “We were super enthusiastic about receiving it.”