The Virginia Tech Foundation has agreed to lend up to $5 million to the Art Museum of Western Virginia to help cover construction costs for its new $66 million building.

"This is a loan, not a gift," stressed the foundation's chief operating officer, Ray Smoot. He said the museum would be charged interest on the loan at market rates.

The foundation also is allowing donors to designate part of their gifts for the new art museum project, in the same way donors are able to earmark their donations to various university departments or public radio station WVTF, which the foundation owns, Smoot said.

He said the university's involvement with the art museum project is the reason for the arrangement. The foundation itself has not contributed to the project, Smoot said.

The university is cooperating with the art museum on some of its educational initiatives.

The new museum, which is under construction across the railroad tracks from the Hotel Roanoke and the O. Winston Link Museum, has raised more than $46 million of the $66 million project cost. It is borrowing from banks as well as the foundation to get the project done, said Kimberly Templeton, the museum's director of external affairs.

Poet inspired

When art museum officials asked poet Melanie Almeder to share her impressions of the museum's landscape exhibit this Wednesday night, they got more than they bargained for. Almeder, a professor of writing and literature at Roanoke College and a published poet, is writing poems about some of her favorite artworks in the exhibit, "The Genius of the Place: Land and Identity in Contemporary Art," which runs through Feb. 11.

Almeder called the exhibit, assembled from around the world by the museum's chief curator, Susannah Koerber, "fantastic. I think we're so lucky to have it in Roanoke."

The poet, whose first book of poems, "On Dream Street," is due out this spring from Tupelo Press, was particularly struck by the work of Vietnamese-American artist Binh Danh, who uses sunlight to make photographic prints on living leaves. Danh focuses on victims of the Vietnam War and Cambodia's bloody Khmer Rouge regime. "It was almost like he was ushering them into transformation," said Almeder of the people depicted in Danh's work.

Almeder, who also is writing poems about Irish artist John Gerrard's computerized "One Thousand Year Dawn" and other works in the exhibit, will read her poems during her gallery talk. (Sample: The dawn coming is generic, historical,/ non-committal. You might have found it off of Apalachicola,/off of Moneghan Island, at the horizon-line of a highway/like every other highway, the trucks hurling along) She hopes to persuade those in attendance to write poems of their own. Almeder's 7 p.m. talk is free to museum members and $5 to others. RSVP Mary Fitzgerald at 342-5762.

First tenant moves into Dumas

The Dumas Center for Artistic & Cultural Development, which held a ceremonial grand opening in November, opened its doors last week in earnest. The renovated hotel on Henry Street received its permanent occupancy permit in late December, and first tenant Opera Roanoke began moving in last week, said Dick Robers, vice president of business affairs for Total Action Against Poverty, which owns the center. Other tenants are expected to be the Dumas Drama Guild and the Downtown Music Lab.

TAP has not yet named a director for the center, Robers said.

Casting call

The Dumas Drama Guild will hold a casting call Saturday at the Crystal Tower Building, 145 Campbell Ave. Those auditioning should perform a two-minute monologue or dance, or sing a minute of a Broadway song. The auditions are from 11 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. For more information, call 345-6781 ext. 4373.