The University of Connecticut is eliminating the curator/director position at the Alexey von Schlippe Gallery of Art on its Avery Point campus in Groton.

Julia Pavone has held that post since she co-founded the gallery 23 years ago with David Madasci.

Pavone — who has said that this was more than a job to her, that it was a devotion — said Wednesday of UConn’s decision, “It was such a shock.”

She will remain on staff until Aug. 4, 2016, because of union regulations. She has been told the gallery will stay open after that but was not told what direction the gallery and exhibitions will take. In a letter to AvS Gallery supporters, Pavone wrote, “Provost Sally Reis, with advice from Anne D’Alleva, Dean of Fine Arts, will make this decision, even though the AvS Gallery has always been an independent and self-supported Avery Point Campus program. To be clear I am not being offered another position by UConn.”

In discussing the move, D'Alleva pointed to the severe budget cuts that UConn is facing because of the state's financial situation. Because of those cuts, UConn officials couldn't maintain all existing programs in their current form and had to make difficult decisions, she said. They had to focus UConn's resources on its core mission of educating students and making sure those students could complete their degrees.

"This is no way reflects on the value of the von Schlippe gallery. I think it's done a wonderful job educating students and reaching out to the public, and I know it has been very important to the Avery Point community," she said. "At the same time, we need to make sure students can get the courses they need to take to graduate. So, for example, hundreds of students every year take general education courses through the arts at Avery Point, through the school of fine arts. We need to make sure that can happen and that they can complete their degrees in a timely manner."

Pavone said she’s been told that UConn officials felt that, with budget cuts, they had to eliminate programs that don’t serve the students directly — although she takes issue with that characterization of the AvS Gallery. She said the gallery does serve students and that she communicates with campus professors, who often work AvS shows into their curriculum each semester.

Pavone said, too, that one of the main tasks given by the university to the regional campuses is community outreach.

“For me, I’m the biggest regional outreach on this campus. I bring in about 3,000 people a year,” Pavone says, adding that that total includes students here and from other schools.

As for what will happen to the gallery after Pavone leaves in August, D'Alleva said, "The gallery will not stay open in its current form. There is no final decision yet. Discussions are ongoing about the nature of the gallery, the future of the gallery. I know everybody is committed to a strong presence for the arts at Avery Point. Exactly what that will look like, I can't say at this point."

The AvS gallery, located in the Branford House, is named after painter Alexey von Schlippe (1915-1988), who was a professor of art at UConn Avery Point. Its permanent collection consists of 500 works from the von Schlippe family. The gallery offers “students, the academic community, and the public, access and exposure to a rich diversity of art which is continuously growing in this region,” along with related activities such as lectures and films, according to its website.

The exhibition on view through Oct. 24 is “Water, Water Everywhere: Paean to a Vanishing Resource,” which is a media and film traveling exhibition. Currently featured, too, are works by regional artists.

Pavone said her impression is UConn doesn’t intend to show and sell works of regional artists after she leaves. The AvS Gallery has displayed national and international work over the years, but it has focused primarily on the region’s artists. Showcasing those artists also brings in a lot of local people, who are interested in those artists and their neighbors.

“We’ve always shown a lot of work that galleries don’t show in the area; the whole range of abstraction, along with realistic work and of course nonrepresentational work and things like that,” Pavone said. “It’s going to be a great disappointment and loss for these artists, let alone all the art patrons.”

When artists and patrons heard about Pavone’s position being eliminated, many of them asked if they could write letters to express their sentiments on the matter. In response came Pavone’s letter to AvS supporters, saying, “If you feel that AvS gallery has touched your life in some way, has been a benefit to you as an artist or as an art lover, has enriched our region, or helped to expose students of all ages to a broader spectrum of the arts, and would like to write a letter in support of the Alexey von Schlippe Gallery of Art and of my position here as curator and director, I have included some appropriate addresses on the back of this letter.”

The names and contact information included are those of Reis and D’Alleva.

Pavone had booked AvS exhibitions through 2018 and said she now has to tell artists that the shows that they’ve been working toward are not going to happen. She considers these solo shows, since each artist is given one of four contiguous, separate spaces inside the AvS Gallery. Pavone said that few galleries in the region do solo shows.

She said she hopes that UConn will let the 2016 exhibition schedule "play out, even if they don’t keep me here to do it."