MOUNT VERNON — The final exhibition in Cornell College’s Armstrong Gallery, opening Sunday, Feb. 10, will pay tribute to the college’s own art history. After senior thesis shows in April and May, Armstrong Hall of Fine Arts closes for renovations and the art department will move to a new location.
“Farewell to Armstrong Gallery: A Look Back to the Early Days” runs through Sunday, March 17, closing with a reception from 2-4 p.m. Gallery hours are 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. Monday through Friday and 2-4 p.m. Sunday. Admission is free.
The exhibition will feature works from the Blanche Armstrong Collection and paintings and sculpture from the larger Cornell College collection. Included will be works by early Cornell art faculty such as Henry Mills, Nama Lathe, Phillip Henderson and Charles Atherton Cumming, who is credited with starting a school of art at Cornell in the early 1890s and later was named head of the University of Iowa department of fine arts.
Blanche Swingley Armstrong graduated from Cornell in 1891 and maintained a relationship with the college, eventually serving as a member of the college’s board of trustees for several years. She died in 1934 and willed her estate to Cornell, specifically for building Armstrong Hall, which was completed in 1938. Included in the estate is an impressive collection of paintings by prominent artists such as Maurice Braun, Charles Reiffel, Susan Ricker Knox, Alexis Fournier, Ramos Martinez and Norman Kennedy, as well as some paintings by Armstrong.
The renovation of Armstrong Hall, which currently houses Cornell’s art, music and theater departments, is part of a $16 million fine arts capital project. The art department’s studios, faculty offices and exhibition areas will relocate to McWethy Hall, which was the college gymnasium when it opened in 1909 as Alumni Hall. The building closed for renovation in March 2001 and will reopen this summer. Armstrong will close for a year, then reopen in summer 2003 — as Cornell begins its sesquicentennial celebration — with renovated facilities for the music and theater departments. Currently a theater addition is being constructed at Armstrong.
Armstrong Gallery will be converted to a music rehearsal and performance space. The Peter Paul Luce Gallery, funded and endowed by a $1 million grant from the Henry Luce Foundation, will open this fall in McWethy Hall.