Shaw Center for the Arts

The Shaw Center for the Arts is a 125,000 square foot (12,000 m²) performing art venue, fine arts museum, and education center located at 100 Lafayette Street in downtown Baton Rouge, Louisiana. It opened in 2005. The Center includes the LSU Museum of Art, the LSU School of Art Glassell Gallery, the 325-seat Manship Theatre, classrooms, Tsunami, a rooftop sushi restaurant, and a park. Among other collections, the museum includes the largest assemblage of Newcomb Pottery in the United States.

The skin of the Shaw Center for the Arts is made of translucent channel glass manufactured in Germany by Glasfabrik Lamberts. The Shaw Center received the American Institute of Architects Gulf States Honor Award in 2005 for its "aggressive concept with a good contrast of materials" and "effective mapping of façade upon the plaza" [1].

The center was built with both public and private funding. The Shaw Group was a major donor to Shaw Center for the Arts, and received the naming rights to the building, however the Shaw Center is neither owned by The Shaw Group nor do they share employees. Other major donors were the Manship families, the Pennington families and Lamar Advertising, which is based in Baton Rouge (Lamar and Reilly families).

The Shaw Center has won several awards for design excellence including:

2008 American Institute of Architects (AIA) National Honor Award