Robert Bast was named as the inaugural Riggsby Director of Marco in 2006, when the Institute took up residence in a campus building called Temple Court, now replaced by a wing of the Student Union. The Institute’s lounge became a home for students and faculty who gathered on Fridays for shared teatime snacks, while its classrooms hosted Marco-affiliated courses as well as the medieval Latin sight-reading group. One highlight of the Temple Court years was the Medieval and Renaissance Semester in fall 2007, featuring a loan exhibition at the McClung Museum titled Sacred Beauty: A Millennium of Religious Art, A.D. 600-1600. The Boston Camerata, a prominent early-music performance group, arrived in Knoxville as artists-in-residence that semester, and five members of the Royal Shakespeare Company joined with UT students and faculty to offer three performances of Macbeth on campus.

From its earliest years, the Institute was vital for sponsoring symposia, providing fellowships for affiliated graduate students, and hosting lectures by visiting scholars. Professor Bast’s impressive fundraising efforts secured the endowment of the Jimmy and Dee Haslam Marco Fund and additional benefactions to support fellowships, an annual symposium, and instruction in medieval Latin. The Lindsay Young Visiting Faculty Fund allowed the Institute to bring prominent scholars to campus to visit with classes and groups of students and deliver lectures along with informal colloquia. Other scholars from the region have visited Knoxville for its libraries and research facilities with support from the Lindsay Young endowment.