Emerson College public art will turn Common-fronting building into giant canvas

Emerson College plans on December 1 to launch a public-art project that will see its Little Building at Tremont and Boylston streets just off the Boston Common become a giant canvas for projected images and lights.

The projections will come via apparatus set up atop 171 Tremont Street, which Emerson recently acquired after a condo redevelopment plan for that building fell through.

The work of eight local artists will be projected first onto a tarp covering the Little Building—a dormitory undergoing its own extensive redevelopment—and then onto the property’s facade as the tarp comes down.

The art will be projected from dusk until midnight daily for the approximately 18 months it is expected to take to rework the Little Building.

That work, incidentally, is part of other Emerson plans to make its downtown Boston campus more distinct and inviting, including new ground-floor retailers and the possible conversion of a Boylston Street parking lane into a plaza.

• Emerson College has big plans for its corner of Boston [Globe]
• Skinny Tower at 171 Tremont Street scrapped as developer sells parcel [Curbed Boston]