
Cornish College of the Arts (CCA) is a
private art college in
Seattle
Seattle ( ) is a port, seaport city on the West Coast of the United States. It is the county seat, seat of King County, Washington, King County, Washington (state), Washington. With a 2020 population of 737,015, it is the largest city in bo ...
, Washington. It was founded in 1914.
History
Cornish College of the Arts was founded in 1914 as the Cornish School of Music, by
Nellie Cornish (1876–1956), a teacher of piano. Cornish would go on to serve as the school's director for its first 25 years, until 1939. The Cornish School of Music began its operations in rented space in the Boothe (or Booth
[Mildred Andrews]
Cornish School
HistoryLink Essay 596, December 26, 1998, updated on June 28, 2006. Retrieved 2010-05-25.) Building on Broadway and Pine Street.
As Cornish developed the idea of her school, she initially turned to the Montessori-based pedagogical method of
Evelyn Fletcher-Copp
Evelyn may refer to:
Places
* Evelyn, London
* Evelyn Gardens, a garden square in London
* Evelyn, Ontario, Canada
* Evelyn, Michigan, United States
* Evelyn, Texas, United States
* Evelyn, Wirt County, West Virginia, United States
* Evely ...
, but turned at last to the progressive musical pedagogy of
Calvin Brainerd Cady
Calvin Brainerd Cady (June 21, 1851 – May 29, 1928) was an American musician, music teacher, leading educational philosopher and writer of the progressive era of education in his subject area.
Cady founded the music department at the University ...
, who had worked as musical director with
John Dewey
John Dewey (; October 20, 1859 – June 1, 1952) was an American philosopher, psychologist, and educational reformer whose ideas have been influential in education and social reform. He was one of the most prominent American scholars in the f ...
as the latter set up his seminal progressive educational project, what is now the
University of Chicago Laboratory Schools. Conceived by Cornish as "an elementary school of the arts—all the arts—with music as its major subject," the school initially taught only children, but it soon expanded to functioning also as a
normal school
A normal school or normal college is an institution created to train teachers by educating them in the norms of pedagogy and curriculum. In the 19th century in the United States, instruction in normal schools was at the high school level, turni ...
(a ''teachers' college'') under Cady. Within three years it had enrolled over 600 students, expanded the age range of its students to college age, and was the country's largest music school west of Chicago.
Nellie Cornish recruited opportunistically where she saw talent, and the school soon offered classes as diverse as
eurhythmics,
French language
French ( or ) is a Romance language of the Indo-European family. It descended from the Vulgar Latin of the Roman Empire, as did all Romance languages. French evolved from Gallo-Romance, the Latin spoken in Gaul, and more specifically in ...
,
painting
Painting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a solid surface (called the "matrix" or "support"). The medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush, but other implements, such as knives, sponges, and ai ...
,
dance (
folk and
ballet
Ballet () is a type of performance dance that originated during the Italian Renaissance in the fifteenth century and later developed into a concert dance form in France and Russia. It has since become a widespread and highly technical form ...
), and
theater
Theatre or theater is a collaborative form of performing art that uses live performers, usually actor, actors or actresses, to present the experience of a real or imagined event before a live audience in a specific place, often a stage. The p ...
.
In 1915, the first full academic year, eurhythmics was added and the first studio arts classes taught. Dance, with a ballet focus, became a department in 1916 headed by Chicago-trained
Mary Ann Wells
Mary may refer to:
People
* Mary (name), a feminine given name (includes a list of people with the name)
Religious contexts
* New Testament people named Mary, overview article linking to many of those below
* Mary, mother of Jesus, also cal ...
. That year, Cornish became one of the first West Coast schools of any type to offer a summer session. After the closing of their influential
Chicago Little Theatre,
Maurice Browne
Maurice Browne (12 February 1881 – 21 January 1955), born in Reading, England, was best known as a theater producer in the United States and the UK. The Cambridge-educated Browne was also a poet, actor, and theater director. He has been cred ...
and
Ellen Van Volkenburg were brought in to found the Drama Department in 1918; the department, with its incorporation of scenic design, music, and dance in its productions, became central to Cornish's plans to ally the arts. Van Volkenburg also began a
marionette
A marionette (; french: marionnette, ) is a puppet controlled from above using wires or strings depending on regional variations. A marionette's puppeteer is called a marionettist. Marionettes are operated with the puppeteer hidden or reveale ...
department, the first such department in the country. By 1923,
opera
Opera is a form of theatre in which music is a fundamental component and dramatic roles are taken by singers. Such a "work" (the literal translation of the Italian word "opera") is typically a collaboration between a composer and a libre ...
and
modern dance had been added to the curriculum as well.
In 1920, in recognition that music was no longer the school's central focus, the school's name was simplified to The Cornish School. By this time, too, the school had expanded its age range, and was offering classes and lessons from early childhood to the undergraduate level. The school gathered a board of trustees from among Seattle's elite, who funded the school through the hard economic times during and after
World War I
World War I (28 July 1914 11 November 1918), often abbreviated as WWI, was List of wars and anthropogenic disasters by death toll, one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. Belligerents included much of Europe, the Russian Empire, ...
, and raised money for a purpose-built school building.
[ Finished in 1921, the Cornish School building, now known as Kerry Hall, opened for the 1921–22 academic year.
The Cornish Trio of the 1920s—Peter Meremblum, Berthe Poncy (later Berthe Poncy Jacobson), and Kola Levienne—may have been the first resident ]chamber music
Chamber music is a form of classical music that is composed for a small group of instruments—traditionally a group that could fit in a palace chamber or a large room. Most broadly, it includes any art music that is performed by a small num ...
group at an American school. In 1935, Cornish established the first (but ultimately short-lived) college-level school of radio broadcasting in the U.S.
Through the 1920s, the school was often on the edge of financial failure, but was of a caliber that prompted Anna Pavlova
Anna Pavlovna Pavlova ( , rus, Анна Павловна Павлова ), born Anna Matveyevna Pavlova ( rus, Анна Матвеевна Павлова; – 23 January 1931), was a Russian prima ballerina of the late 19th and the early 20t ...
to call it "the kind of school other schools should follow." Although the mortgage was paid off and the building had been donated to the school in 1929, financial difficulties inevitably grew during the Great Depression. Ultimately, convinced that finances would not allow the school to do more than "tread water", Nellie Cornish resigned her position as head of the school in 1939.
While there were difficult years for the school after 1939, in the long run Cornish did much more than "tread water". With support from local arts organizations and a core of dedicated faculty and staff, the school ultimately "reinvented" itself many times, and in 1977 earned full accreditation as a degree granting college from the Northwest Commission on Colleges. That was one year after the establishment of the Theatre Department as the fifth fully fledged academic department. In 1982, the college received a large Title III grant which was instrumental in establishing the Video Art program in the Art department, and in the genesis of the Performance Production Department, which was granted full departmental status with the graduation of its first class in 1986. The BFA in Performance Production added concentrations in Costume, Lighting, Scenic and Sound Design, Stage Management and Technical Direction. Performance Production was established as an independent department so that it would be able to provide support to major productions of the Theatre, Dance and Music departments and provide its students with experience in all three. Recognizing the vital importance of liberal arts studies as a part of the education of an artist, Cornish established its seventh department, Humanities and Sciences, some years later. Humanities and Sciences had been an important part of the Cornish education even before the accreditation process of the 1970s, but the important step of granting department status reaffirmed the commitment to "whole person" education.
''Miss Aunt Nellie: The Autobiography of Nellie C. Cornish'', was published by the University of Washington Press in 1964, largely with funds from the Cornish School Alumni Association. Produced a decade after Nellie Cornish's death, the book was co-edited by Ellen Van Volkenburg and Edward Nordhoff Beck.
Campus
Cornish College of the Arts operates a three-part campus in the Capitol Hill, Denny Triangle, and Seattle Center areas of Seattle, Washington.
Cornish's historic campus is composed of its original 1921 building on Capitol Hill and its grounds. The building, now known as Kerry Hall, contains the 200-seat PONCHO Concert Hall. Kerry Hall was designed in the Spanish Colonial Revival style by leading Seattle architect Abraham H. Albertson
Abraham Horace Albertson (April 14, 1872 – April 18, 1964) was an American architect who was one of Seattle, Washington's most prominent architects of the first half of the 20th century. He was born in New Jersey and educated at Columbia Univer ...
and is on the National Register of Historic Places
The National Register of Historic Places (NRHP) is the United States federal government's official list of districts, sites, buildings, structures and objects deemed worthy of preservation for their historical significance or "great artist ...
(NRHP) as the "Cornish School".
Cornish opened its new Main Campus in 2003 in the Denny Triangle area of downtown Seattle. The 1928, Art Deco-style Main Campus Center is listed on the NRHP as "William Volker Building". Other buildings of note are the Raisbeck Performance Hall constructed in 1915, a Seattle City Landmark under the name "Old Norway Hall", and the 1929 Notion Building. In 2015, the college opened the new 20-story Cornish Commons, which contains a residence hall, studios, and meeting rooms.
Located on the Seattle Center grounds is the Cornish Playhouse at Seattle Center, the college's premier performance venue. Built for the Century 21 Exposition of 1962, the Playhouse was leased to Cornish by the City of Seattle in 2013.[Berson, Misha. "New name, same theatre at Seattle Center". ''The Seattle Times'', May 6, 2013.] Along with the 440-seat main stage, the complex includes the 100+ seat Alhadeff Studio Theater and a scene shop.
Library
The library at Cornish College specializes in art, dance, design, music, performance production, and theatre. it held 4,700 CDs, 40,000 books, has 2,200 videos, and subscribed to 154 periodicals. Its special collections include an image collection and 35 mm slides.
Notable alumni
Actors
* Brendan Fraser, who graduated from Cornish in 1990, is one of Cornish's best known graduates.
*Jinkx Monsoon
Jerick Roman Lamar Hoffer (born September 18, 1987), better known by the stage name Jinkx Monsoon, is an American drag performer, actor, comedian and singer best known for winning the fifth season of '' RuPaul's Drag Race'' and the seventh sea ...
, who graduated in 2010, is a drag queen, actor and singer and best known for winning the 5th season of RuPaul's Drag Race.
Fine artists
* Aleah Chapin
Aleah Chapin (born March 11, 1986) is an American painter whose direct portrayals of the human form have expanded the conversation around western culture’s representations of the body in art. Described by Eric Fischl as “the best and most d ...
, who graduated in 2009, became the first American painter to win the prestigious BP Portrait Award from the National Portrait Gallery, London
The National Portrait Gallery (NPG) is an art gallery in London housing a collection of portraits of historically important and famous British people. It was arguably the first national public gallery dedicated to portraits in the world when it ...
.
* Terry Fox, first generation Conceptual artist and a central participant in the West Coast performance art, video and sound scene of the late 1960s and 1970s.
* Heather Hart, graduated in 1998, is best known for her large art installations.
* Kumi Yamashita graduated with a B.F.A. in Art 1994.
Musicians
* Ann Wilson, musician, member of the band, Heart
The heart is a muscular organ found in most animals. This organ pumps blood through the blood vessels of the circulatory system. The pumped blood carries oxygen and nutrients to the body, while carrying metabolic waste such as carbon diox ...
.
* Mary Lambert, a Grammy-nominated singer-songwriter, debuted on Capitol Records with her album ''Heart on My Sleeve''.
* Catherine Harris-White
THEESatisfaction is a former American music duo based in Seattle, Washington. It consisted of Stasia "Stas" Irons and Catherine "Cat" Harris-White.
History
Stasia Irons was born in 1985 in Tacoma, Washington. Catherine Harris-White was rais ...
, aka SassyBlack, is co-creator of non defunct group Thee Satisfaction, recording artists on Sub Pop Records, graduated from the Music Department in 2008.
* Lena Raine, composer and producer, known for her video game soundtracks
Video game music (or VGM) is the soundtrack that accompanies video games. Early video game music was once limited to sounds of early sound chips, such as programmable sound generators (PSG) or FM synthesis chips. These limitations have led to ...
.
* Reggie Watts, musician and comedian, studied music at Cornish in the early 1990s.
Dancers
* Merce Cunningham is the best known alumnus in the dance department, matriculated in 1937 and was lured away by Martha Graham and her dance company in 1939.
* Robert Joffrey, dancer and choreographer, studied at Cornish at some point, and is listed as a member of the alumni association.[Alumni News, Cornish School of Allied Arts, unpublished, The Cornish School Archives, University of Washington Special Collections, 1953.]
References
* Mildred Andrews
Cornish School
HistoryLink Essay 596, December 26, 1998, updated on June 28, 2006.
*
*
External links
*
{{authority control
Universities and colleges in Seattle
Art schools in Washington (state)
National Register of Historic Places in Seattle
Educational institutions established in 1914
Design schools in the United States
Universities and colleges accredited by the Northwest Commission on Colleges and Universities
University and college buildings on the National Register of Historic Places in Washington (state)
1914 establishments in Washington (state)
Private universities and colleges in Washington (state)