Call Description

The Art in State Buildings Program at the University of Florida is commissioning an artist or artist team to create a site-specific work of art for the new UF Dental Sciences Building Addition.  Housing the expansion of the Dental Sciences program, this addition will also serve as the new west entrance to the UF Health Sciences Center Campus. The Dental Sciences Building Addition creates a welcoming visitor experience through modern design with a thoughtful focus on natural light.

Location: Gainesville, FL

Art Budget: $98,000 - $95,000 for site-specific art

Honoraria: Finalists will receive an honorarium to create and virtually present a site-specific proposal.  The amount of each honorarium will be determined by the number of finalists, not to exceed 4 artists/artist teams.  The total amount available for all honoraria payments is expected to be between $2,000 -  $5,000 and is separate from the art budget listed above. 

Travel: There is a separate travel stipend to offset the cost of finalists visiting Gainesville, FL for an in-person site visit. 

Project Timeline: Construction August 2026-August 2028; Application Review and Finalists Notification Spring 2026; Finalist Site Visit October 2026; Proposal Presentation and Selection December 2026; Installation ~December 2027.

Sites for Art: (renderings and dimensioned floorplans linked separately)

The art selection committee is particularly interested in art for the Atrium. Suspended works or building integrations are desired. Serving as the main concourse for the Dental Sciences Building and the entire UF Health Sciences Campus, art should have a focus on visitor engagement, enhancing the patient experience by being both welcoming and stress reducing. There is also opportunity for placement of exterior works of art along the west drop off loop and active pedestrian pathway, although this site is secondary to the Atrium.   

Informational Text:

University of Florida

Located in the heart of North Central Florida, the University of Florida (http://ufl.edu) is one of America’s premier public Universities and is currently ranked No. 1 according to the 2025 Wall Street Journal Report, and is the first Florida school to break into the list of top 10 best public universities, ranked at No. 7, according to the 2024 U.S. News & World Report Best Colleges rankings.  The University of Florida is one of the largest universities in the United States and students from more than 100 countries attend UF’s 20 colleges and 100 interdisciplinary research and education centers and institutes. 

UF has a 2,000-acre campus and more than 900 buildings, including the first Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design (LEED) Platinum- certified building in the state of Florida.

One of America’s all-around best universities, the University of Florida drives future-making education, eye-opening discoveries, life-saving health care, and community-building collaboration for our state, our nation, and our world. 

Florida’s Art in State Buildings Program

The Art in State Buildings (ASB) Program acquires artwork for new public facilities built with state funds. The program requires that up to .5% of the construction appropriation be set aside to acquire artwork for permanent display in, on or around the facility.

Since the program began in 1979, more than 1,000 works of art have been purchased or commissioned for Florida public spaces. You'll find them in nearly every Florida county, in locations such as state office buildings, Department of Transportation complexes, Department of Health facilities, courthouses, and throughout state university and college campuses.

UF Dental Sciences Building Addition

The University of Florida College of Dentistry (UFCD) is Florida’s only public dental school in Florida, underscoring its unique role in shaping the state’s dental education and workforce. Since welcoming its first class in 1972, UFCD has grown into one of the nation’s premier dental schools – offering a comprehensive suite of specialty programs and a top research mission. Today, UFCD stands at a critical moment. The depth of its expertise and the scale of its mission have outpaced the physical capacity of its current facilities which opened its doors in 1976. To meet growing demands, a transformative expansion and modernization initiative is being launched with the strong support of the Board of Governors and our state leadership. This includes adding space and renovating part of the existing Dental Science Building (DSB), the primary hub for UFCD’s programs in Gainesville. The DSB also serves as a shared space for the colleges of Medicine, Pharmacy, Nursing, Public Health and Health Professions, and UF Health Shands. This project will allow UFCD to better address dental workforce needs in the state by expanding the student- and patient-focused space, transform the West Entrance to the Health Sciences Center campus - heavily used by patients, students, and visitors – improve aging infrastructure and enhance support goals of UF Campus Master Plan. 

College of Dentistry Impact

·      Meet increasing applicant demands. The DSB project will add 160 more dental students and dental residents by 2031 in critically needed specialties such as endodontics, oral diagnostic sciences, periodontology, orthodontics and pediatric dentistry. Approximately 43 new graduates per year of general and specialty dentists will be added. Currently UFCD accepts ~4 percent of highly qualified applicants. In 2025, the college received a record 3,717 applications for its current 158 dental school and residency slots.

·         Address oral health needs holistically. Individuals with intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) face significant barriers/access to care. UFCD is aggressively addressing this difficult challenge by creating a new Personalized Dental Center as part of the DSB project. Additionally, a new Center for Integrative Oral and Dental Medicine will integrate oral health with overall health, allowing dental students and residents to experience a collaborative environment where dentists, physicians and other health professionals will treatment plan and manage complex patients jointly. This together with the Personalized Care Clinic significantly expands care to vulnerable people in the community.  

·         Right-size the current program. Additional space will provide innovative, collaborative and high-tech student learning spaces and an advanced simulation laboratory.

·         Enhance patient experience by featuring modern dental centers with increased patient capacity, while leveraging UF’s Artificial Intelligence resources, and expanding digital dentistry programs.

·         Improve Safety and Quality through improved infrastructure and environmental quality for all occupants, patients, and students.

·         Bolster competition with peers. Acute clinical faculty shortages are fueling fierce competition among dental schools to hire and retain talent. This transformative project will position UFCD to better compete for the best faculty, staff, residents and dental students.

·         Improves access to care. Currently UFCD completes over 100,000 patient visits/year in Gainesville. With an increase in clinical space, the college’s capacity would grow to 145,000 patient visits per year. Many of these patients have complex needs that cannot be managed elsewhere.

Application Requirements

Required Application Materials:

A brief letter of interest describing why your artwork is appropriate for the project and how the submitted images relate to the project requirements. Artists may also briefly describe their history, training, and experience.

Current professional CV or Resume, demonstrating that your public art experience meets at least 2 of the above listed required criteria to apply.  Please ensure this information is labeled and easily found within this document.

Ten (10) to 20 digital images of artworks- The first five images provided will be shown to the committee in the initial blind review.  The first five images are the only application materials that the entire committee is guaranteed to see.

Artwork with sound or motion may be submitted as a video or audio file. Up to 6 video or audio files may be submitted and each file counts as an “image” in the 20 allowable. Please do not submit video or audio as one of the first 5 images. Promotional videos or “making of” videos should not be included.  

A brief description of each artwork image submitted with the following information:

Title

Medium (list or describe the materials used to create this work)

Dimensions (H x W x D) in ft. or in.

Date of Artwork

Price of artwork or commission

Site or location including city (if applicable)

Commissioning Agent/Client/Collection/Exhibiting Museum or Gallery (as applicable)

Additional notes on the review process:

Florida’s Art in State Building’s program requires multiple “blind reviews.” Images with the artist’s name added as a digital watermark or slide presentation will not be reviewed. An original signature within a painting or on a sculpture is permissible.     

Hundreds of applications are reviewed for each project; it is not possible to provide individual responses as to why an artist/artist team was not selected as a finalist. The names of the finalists will be provided to all applicants.    

If the required description information for each artwork image submitted is already included in the artwork details within café, you may submit the text “see upload details” in the application text field.    

Eligibility Criteria

*Criteria to Apply: To be considered for this project, artists must demonstrate through the CV or Resume that your public art experience meets at least two (2) of the following criteria:

-The artist’s works are included in private, public, corporate or museum, collections;

-The artist has received awards, grants or fellowships;

-The artist has completed other public commissions on a similar scale;

-The artist has participated in exhibitions at major museums or galleries.

*Please ensure this information is labeled and easily found within your CV or Resume.