The Rollins Museum of Art is located on the Winter Park campus of Rollins College and is the only teaching museum in the greater Orlando area. The museum houses more than 5,000 objects ranging from antiquity through contemporary eras, including rare old master paintings and a comprehensive collection of prints, drawings, and photographs. The museum displays temporary exhibitions on a rotating basis along with the permanent collection.
History
A collection composed of portraits of college notables and natural history artifacts was put together at Rollins College around the turn of the 20th century. In the 1930s, fine arts were added to the collection prompted, in part, by the gifts of two Italian Renaissance paintings from the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. The first purpose-built museum on campus was the Morse Gallery of Art which opened in 1941. It was administered by Jeannette Morse Genius (who also provided the funds for the building) and her husband, Dr. Hugh McKean, who later became president of Rollins College (1951–69). In 1976, George and Harriet Cornell donated the funds to construct a fine arts complex that would include a new museum. The Cornell Fine Arts Museum opened its doors in 1978, and three years later became Florida’s first college art museum to be accredited by the American Association of Museums (today the American Alliance of Museums). The building underwent a significant expansion in 2004–5, and now includes six galleries and a print study room. A satellite exhibition space for the Museum's Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art was introduced in 2013 at The Alfond Inn—a philanthropic boutique hotel owned by Rollins College, whose proceeds help fund student scholarships.
Collection
Collection totals over 5,000 objects ranging from antiquity through contemporary:
*Over 500 paintings from the 14th–21st centuries.
*Over 1500 prints, drawings and photographs dating from the 15th–21st centuries.
*Over 1100 ethnographic objects and object fragments, many from the original natural history museum on campus; some of the items were donated by the Smithsonian after that museum burned in the 1920s.
*Over 1200 watch keys ranging from the 16th–late 19th centuries.
Highlights
*1936 General and Mrs. John Carty donate the first old master painting, ''The Dead Christ with Symbols of the Passion'', by
Lavinia Fontana
Lavinia Fontana (August 24, 1552 – August 11, 1614) was a Bolognese Mannerist painter active in Bologna and Rome. She is best known for her successful portraiture, but also worked in the genres of mythology and religious painting. She was trai ...
. Donations by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation in 1937 and 1938 formally inaugurate fine art collecting.
*1948 Grandma Moses gives to the college the oil painting, ''Out on the Lake''.
*1950s George H. Sullivan, a Winter Park resident, made the first major donations to the museum, including works by William Louis Sonntag and Francesco de Mura.
*1960s Rollins alumni, Jack and June Myers, donate what would become the backbone of the Cornell’s old master collection, including works by Gerolamo Bassano,
Jacopo Tintoretto
Tintoretto ( , , ; born Jacopo Robusti; late September or early October 1518Bernari and de Vecchi 1970, p. 83.31 May 1594) was an Italian painter identified with the Venetian school. His contemporaries both admired and criticized the speed with ...
,
Thomas Lawrence
Sir Thomas Lawrence (13 April 1769 – 7 January 1830) was an English portrait painter and the fourth president of the Royal Academy. A child prodigy, he was born in Bristol and began drawing in Devizes, where his father was an innkeeper at ...
,
Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo
Giovanni Domenico Tiepolo (August 30, 1727March 3, 1804) was an Italian painter and printmaker in etching. He was the son of artist Giovanni Battista Tiepolo and elder brother of Lorenzo Baldissera Tiepolo.
Life history
Domenico was born in ...
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William-Adolphe Bouguereau
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (; 30 November 1825 – 19 August 1905) was a French academic painter. In his realistic genre paintings, he used mythological themes, making modern interpretations of classical subjects, with an emphasis on the female ...
,
Pieter Claesz
Pieter Claesz (c. 1597 – 1 January 1660) was a Dutch Golden Age painter of still lifes.
Biography
He was born in Berchem, Belgium, near Antwerp, where he became a member of the Guild of St. Luke in 1620. He moved to Haarlem in 1620, wher ...
.
*2000 Kenneth Curry bequeathed over 30 Bloomsbury Group paintings and drawings.
*2008 The
Andy Warhol Foundation for the Visual Arts
Andy Warhol (; born Andrew Warhola Jr.; August 6, 1928 – February 22, 1987) was an American visual artist, film director, and producer who was a leading figure in the Art movement, visual art movement known as pop art. His works explore th ...
donated 156 photographs and polaroids through the Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program.
*2013 Barbara and
Ted Alfond
Ted Alfond (born 1945) is an American billionaire businessman.
Biography
Ted Alfond was born to a Jewish family, the son of Dorothy (nee Levine) and Harold Alfond.New York Times, March 16, 2015: Cedar Grove, Peabody Essex and Other Niche Museums Foray Into Contemporary Art /ref>
*2021 On July 28, Dr. Ena Heller, director of the museum announced that the Cornell Fine Arts Museum or what has been previously known as CFAM, will be known as the Rollins Museum of Art effective starting fall 2021. The name change is to signify the beginning of a new phase in the museum's 40-year history and a capital campaign for Rollins College as they prepare for a new state-of-the-art multi-million dollar facility in Winter Park across from the Rollins owned Alfond Inn. The capital campaign is known as the Innovation Triangle project which includes a new and larger museum facility with teaching capabilities, a new and permanent location for the Rollins College - Crummer Graduate School of Business, and an expansion of the Alfond Inn.
Pablo Picasso
Pablo Ruiz Picasso (25 October 1881 – 8 April 1973) was a Spanish painter, sculptor, printmaker, ceramicist and Scenic design, theatre designer who spent most of his adult life in France. One of the most influential artists of the 20th ce ...
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Robert Priseman
Robert Priseman (born in Spondon, Derbyshire in 1965) is a British artist, collector, writer, curator and publisher who lives and works in Essex, England. Over 200 works of art by Priseman are held in art museum collections around the world in ...
*Francisco Soliment
*
Alfredo Jaar
Alfredo Jaar (; ; born 1956) is a Chilean-born artist, architect, photographer and filmmaker who lives in New York City. He is mostly known as an installation artist, often incorporating photography and covering socio-political issues and war— ...
Kara Walker
Kara Elizabeth Walker (born November 26, 1969) is an American contemporary painter, silhouettist, print-maker, installation artist, filmmaker, and professor who explores race, gender, sexuality, violence, and identity in her work. She is best ...
*William Sontag
*
Childe Hassam
Frederick Childe Hassam (; October 17, 1859 – August 27, 1935) was an American Impressionist painter, noted for his urban and coastal scenes. Along with Mary Cassatt and John Henry Twachtman, Hassam was instrumental in promulgating Impressioni ...
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Tracey Emin
Tracey Karima Emin, CBE, RA (; born 3 July 1963) is a British artist known for her autobiographical and confessional artwork. Emin produces work in a variety of media including drawing, painting, sculpture, film, photography, neon text and ...
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Vanessa Bell
Vanessa Bell (née Stephen; 30 May 1879 – 7 April 1961) was an English painter and interior designer, a member of the Bloomsbury Group and the sister of Virginia Woolf (née Stephen).
Early life and education
Vanessa Stephen was the eld ...
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David Hockney
David Hockney (born 9 July 1937) is an English painter, draftsman, printmaker, stage designer, and photographer. As an important contributor to the pop art movement of the 1960s, he is considered one of the most influential British artists o ...
Romare Bearden
Romare Bearden (September 2, 1911 – March 12, 1988) was an American artist, author, and songwriter. He worked with many types of media including cartoons, oils, and collages. Born in Charlotte, North Carolina, Bearden grew up in New York City a ...
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Robert Henri
Robert Henri (; June 24, 1865 – July 12, 1929) was an American painter and teacher.
As a young man, he studied in Paris, where he identified strongly with the Impressionists, and determined to lead an even more dramatic revolt against A ...
Elizabeth Catlett
Elizabeth Catlett, born as Alice Elizabeth Catlett, also known as Elizabeth Catlett Mora (April 15, 1915 – April 2, 2012) was an African American sculptor and graphic artist best known for her depictions of the Black-American experience in the ...
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Sam Gilliam
Sam Gilliam ( ; November 30, 1933 – June 25, 2022) was an American color field painter and lyrical abstractionist artist. Gilliam was associated with the Washington Color School, a group of Washington, D.C.-area artists that developed a form ...
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Francis Bacon
Francis Bacon, 1st Viscount St Alban (; 22 January 1561 – 9 April 1626), also known as Lord Verulam, was an English philosopher and statesman who served as Attorney General and Lord Chancellor of England. Bacon led the advancement of both ...
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Albert Bierstadt
Albert Bierstadt (January 7, 1830 – February 18, 1902) was a German-American painter best known for his lavish, sweeping landscapes of the American West. He joined several journeys of the Westward Expansion to paint the scenes. He was not ...
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William-Adolphe Bouguereau
William-Adolphe Bouguereau (; 30 November 1825 – 19 August 1905) was a French academic painter. In his realistic genre paintings, he used mythological themes, making modern interpretations of classical subjects, with an emphasis on the female ...
*
Chuck Close
Charles Thomas Close (July 5, 1940 – August 19, 2021) was an American painter, visual artist, and photographer who made massive-scale photorealist and abstract portraits of himself and others. Close also created photo portraits using a very l ...
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Vik Muniz
Vik Muniz (; born 1961) is a Brazilian artist and photographer. Initially a sculptor, Muniz grew interested with the photographic representations of his work, eventually focusing completely on photography. Primarily working with unconventional ma ...
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John Frederick Kensett
John Frederick Kensett (March 22, 1816 – December 14, 1872) was an American
landscape painter and engraver born in Cheshire, Connecticut. He was a member of the second generation of the Hudson River School of artists. Kensett's signature works ...
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Jacob Lawrence
Jacob Armstead Lawrence (September 7, 1917 – June 9, 2000) was an American painter known for his portrayal of African-American historical subjects and contemporary life. Lawrence referred to his style as "dynamic cubism", although by his own ...
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William Kentridge
William Kentridge (born 28 April 1955) is a South African artist best known for his prints, drawings, and animated films, especially noted for a sequence of hand-drawn animated films he produced during the 1990s. The latter are constructed by ...
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Jacques Lipchitz
Jacques Lipchitz (26 May 1973) was a Cubist sculptor. Lipchitz retained highly figurative and legible components in his work leading up to 1915–16, after which naturalist and descriptive elements were muted, dominated by a synthetic style of ...
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Maya Lin
Maya Ying Lin (born October 5, 1959) is an American designer and sculptor. In 1981, while an undergraduate at Yale University, she achieved national recognition when she won a national design competition for the planned Vietnam Veterans Memoria ...
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Thomas Gainsborough
Thomas Gainsborough (14 May 1727 (baptised) – 2 August 1788) was an English portrait and landscape painter, draughtsman, and printmaker. Along with his rival Sir Joshua Reynolds, he is considered one of the most important British artists of ...
Robert Motherwell
Robert Motherwell (January 24, 1915 – July 16, 1991) was an American abstract expressionist painter, printmaker, and editor of ''The Dada Painters and Poets: an Anthology''. He was one of the youngest of the New York School, which also inc ...
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Claes Oldenburg
Claes Oldenburg (January 28, 1929 – July 18, 2022) was a Swedish-born American sculptor, best known for his public art installations typically featuring large replicas of everyday objects. Another theme in his work is soft sculpture versions ...
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Winslow Homer
Winslow Homer (February 24, 1836 – September 29, 1910) was an American landscape painter and illustrator, best known for his marine subjects. He is considered one of the foremost painters in 19th-century America and a preeminent figure in ...
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William Merritt Chase
William Merritt Chase (November 1, 1849October 25, 1916) was an American painter, known as an exponent of Impressionism and as a teacher. He is also responsible for establishing the Chase School, which later would become Parsons School of Design. ...