Camping outside the Tang for a chance at a Matisse or a Warhol for our dorm room

Slowly, I stuck my head out from my sleeping bag and waited for my eyes to adjust to the morning light. Around me, I could hear hushed sounds from dozens of other students, who, along with my roommate and me, had camped out overnight outside the Tang Teaching Museum as part of its annual Roommate: Living with Tang Art program.

The relatively new but increasingly popular Skidmore tradition allows Skidmore students to check out dozens of pieces of art from the Tang collection and experience the art by living for with it for an academic year in their dorm rooms and campus apartments.

Looking around on a Saturday morning in September, I could feel the energy of all the students who had slept outside hoping to get a good spot in line, so they could borrow their favorite pieces from the museum.

Tom Yoshikami, assistant director of engagement for the Tang Teaching Museum, emerged from the Tang building to announce there were pastries and coffee for all of us. I eagerly took in a chocolate chip pumpkin bread and some caffeine.

Yoshikami told me and other members of the Tang Student Advisory Council, a group of peers who volunteer to act as ambassadors of the museum and collaborate to throw events, that the idea for Roommate came from students a few years ago. At first, he said the concept seemed radical. But after some research, the Tang realized that the opportunity would offer priceless learning opportunities for students, who could live with the art, experience it greater depth, and respect the creative labor involved in producing it.

The Tang packages the art up carefully and gives student detailed instructions on how to hang it. Instructions also appear on a tote bag that students get to keep. Besides, anyone who would camp out overnight outside the Tang must be passionate enough about art to take good care of it!

Starting in 2020, the Tang began loaning out about 50 pieces including a Dalí, a Picasso, and a Matisse. This year, that number increased as the Tang added a Warhol and 24 additional artworks, for a total of 75 pieces. Each artwork also comes with a journal for students to write about their experience.

Roommate has quickly blossomed into a beloved Skidmore tradition for eager art lovers willing to bear the weather for something beautiful. Someday, Yoshikami said, the Tang hopes the artworks will become a way of connecting students and alumni who lived with the same work of art over the years.

I heard about Roommate through my roommate, whose sister had participated in the program when she was at Skidmore a few years ago. Renée, my roommate, was intrigued because she’s a studio art major, and the Roommate program caught my attention, too: Although I’m pursuing a self-declared major in multimedia journalism, art has always been an interest of mine.

Seeing 75 artworks in varying mediums and styles at a viewing party at the Tang, flipping through the journal entries of years past, and listening to other eager students talk about camping out to get their first choices quickly convinced us we wanted to participate, too: It’s first come, first served, so if you want a big-name artist, you need to work for it.

Although students started setting up at 4 p.m. the evening before, Renée and I arrived at the Tang at around 10:30 p.m. We brought sleeping bags, pillows, and cushions to sleep on. People around us had tents and air mattresses. Although there was some friendly “competition” between different parties over who would get the best piece, it was clear that most participants didn’t take things too seriously.

It was a chance to stay up late and spend time with friends all excited about the same thing. Laughs echoed late into the night.

We were lucky, of course, that there wasn’t any rain. Although the air was chill, it was clear, and the stars smiled down on us.

In the morning, we were given numbered buttons to represent our place in line. One by one, we filed into the museum to choose our pieces.

The Warhol was the first to go. At No. 32 in line, I got my first choice (besides the Matisse … maybe next year!). I selected a mixed-media painting by Lisa Sanditz of a unicorn surrounded by cars and trash cans, a play on the famous medieval tapestry “The Unicorn Rests in a Garden.” It now sits above my fridge in my dorm and is the first thing I see when I enter my room. My roommate got a framed synthetic fiber piece by Victoria Manganiello, which she hung above her bed.

Now we walk around campus with our Roommate tote bags and know we are making a statement: The tote bags show that we are one of the 75 students on campus who braved the cold to participate in the Roommate tradition, because art matters to us.