Viewing fine art, paintings and photography may seem out of reach and expensive for college students, but they don’t have to look any further than the LSU Museum of Art.The LSU MOA, located on the fifth floor of the Shaw Center at 100 Lafayette St., is hosting an LSU Night tonight from 5:30 p.m. to 8 p.m. The event is exclusive to University students and faculty, and admission is free with a student ID.  “We want people to see it all,” said Victoria Cooke, assistant curator of LSU MOA. ”A lot of people have never seen the museum before, and we wanted to give them a chance to see it.”LSU Night will celebrate the opening of the new gallery, LSU Art: Past and Present. To represent the past, the exhibit features work from former University professors Caroline Durieux, Ed Pramuk, Robert Warren and James Burke.Current featured professors include Christopher Johns, Leslie Koptcho and Frederick Ortner.The gallery will show the evolution and change of the University’s artists throughout the years, Johns said.”There is an editor between a reader and a writer,” Johns said. “There’s a conductor between the listener and musician. But with paintings, there is no one between you and the artist. That is why it is great whenever we make it possible for students to see live art.”The incorporation of mixed media, prints and paintings exemplifies the creativity of the University’s art program, Cooke said. Each professor will have his or her own wall of art.Johns’ collection for the museum consists of six works on paper  — Basic Sailing 1, Casbah, Exile 15, Fiskadoro 6, Travel Tales-Ingresso and Travel Tales 1. A childhood sailing manual and Hungarian playing cards inspired the pieces, he said.”The paintings are a memory or fantasy about getting out of the house as a kid,” Johns said.Koptcho’s 2009 collection for the museum consists of two sets of three works. Her Gustav Cut series and Peel, Grow, Virgule series are both inspired by microscopic images she has captured at the University’s Department of Biological Sciences. The works compare human skin to birchwood and cypress trees, she said.”My current work focuses on skin as a metaphor for identity and the fragile boundary between the outer world of physical appearance and the interior one of private and psychic complexity,” Koptcho said.Ortner’s collection contains seven paintings — Still Life with Pentagon I and II, Vermont, Cardinal, Still Life with Cardinal II, and Studio Still Life I and II. He said he creates his paintings with readable space, so the eye can move smoothly through the picture without interruptions.”My paintings are made directly from nature,” Ortner said. “I study the visual experience to discover forms, tones and colors that will set up equivalencies in paint to the perceived world.”LSU Dining, Jambalaya Shoppe and Tsunami will cater the event. Guests will also receive a 20 percent discount at the LSU MOA museum store.————Contact Lindsay Nunez at [email protected]