Campaign For Cornish

The CAMPAIGN FOR CORNISH

‘east/west double trio’ performance at poncho concert hall

mission statement The mission of Cornish College of the Arts is to provide students aspiring to become practicing artists with an educational program of the highest possible quality, in an environment that nurtures creativity and intellectual curiosity, while preparing them to contribute to society as artists, citizens, and innovators.

Cornish realizes this mission by offering baccalaureate studies in the performing and visual arts and by serving as a focal point in the community for public presentation, artistic criticism, participation and discussion of the arts.

‘cornish dance theater’ concert

Every important city in the world has

the great fabric of cultural life

to enhance its existence and to help identify it.

— Gerard Schwarz

Conductor Laureate,

S e at t l e S y m p h o n y O r c h e s t r a

bfa exhibition

painting studio

‘the pajama game’, a collaboration between theater and performance production departments

a theater student prepares for a performance

music students in the recording studio

invigorating a city on the edge

A student scratches ideas in a notebook. Music swells down the hall. A sculpture takes shape and

dancers prepare to take the stage. Under the low-slung grey of a city on the edge, the halls, classrooms, studios and performance spaces at Cornish brim with creativity.

Few cultural institutions existed in our gritty, hardscrabble town when Nellie Cornish first established her music school. Nearly a century later, Cornish College of the Arts assembles some of the most promising young artists from around the world, offering each of them a rigorous education that cultivates individual vision and voice.

We are innovators. Our students, faculty and alumni have transformed modern dance, revolutionized contemporary music and pushed the boundaries of visual and performing art. They bring to life the galleries, stages and creative enterprise throughout our city.

They invigorate the city itself, helping to keep Seattle on the leading edge of ingenuity.

bfa exhibition

cornish college of the arts

cornish college of the arts

Building a laboratory of

ideas & imaginatioN The campus is where Cornish comes together – a laboratory of ideas and

imagination where artists intersect. Dancers alongside pianists, painters working with performers. Because collaboration is only possible when students interact.

Shared space is a necessary ingredient for creative discovery and every budding artist needs a room where she can work. That room must invite the inspiration of her peers and provide the tools, materials and light she needs to discover her voice.

Cornish students arrive on campus with new ideas, new ways of interpreting the world around them. They experiment with media and explore technology. To remain vital, Cornish must meet the evolving creative and academic needs of our students, our faculty and the community.

The arts are dynamic. So are we.

‘the good person of szechwan’, a student performance staged at broadway performance hall

in recording studio with jovino santos-neto

image caption treatment

photographer’s credit

art department alumni sculpture exhibition

‘merce cunningham minevent’ performance

cornish college of the arts

PuRSUING a FUTURE WHERE CREATIVITY BLOOMS

Arts education has never been more important. It provokes creativity.

It kindles innovative thinking. It equips young people to take risks and tackle the challenges of an uncertain future. An arts education asks every student to peel back, dig deep and find his voice in this world.

Dreamers, daredevils, virtuosos, firebrands – The Campaign for Cornish is a campaign for every student who comes to study and create at one of the country’s finest arts colleges.

The Campaign will usher Cornish into the next century by creating an urban campus and growing our endowment. It will provide the space and stimulation to hatch new ideas and create bold new work – studios where sculptors shape or actors improvise. A growing endowment will secure our future for generations of students yet to come.

sculpture studio

These aims are a means to an end, pushing Cornish ever closer to the center of art, culture and innovation. Where engaged citizens feed the creative heartbeat of our workforce, schools and civic life. Where art and creativity thrive.

bfa exhibition

cornish college of the arts

BLURRING THE BOUNDARY BETWEEN CLASSROOMS & CITY LIFE

Cornish began as a small music school nestled on the north end of Seattle’s Capitol Hill.

Nearly 100 years later, we’re building our future in the city’s urban core.

The new Cornish campus eliminates the boundary between classrooms and the verve of city life, feeding an already strong connection among our students, faculty, alumni and Seattle’s arts community. If you’ve been carried away by a performance on one of the many stages in this city, admired a piece of art at a local gallery, or marveled at the work of a community arts organization, then you’ve intersected with Cornish College of the Arts. Our new campus will strengthen this exchange.

A Performing Arts Complex will be pivotal to our new campus. This exceptional facility will provide a new home to the dance and music departments.

Surrounding the Performing Arts Complex, we will renovate and expand existing buildings to create enhanced learning spaces, including additional classrooms and a space for the study of media arts, an expanded Cornish Main Gallery, and a new home for the Art Department Senior Studios and Sculpture Program.

cornish campus located in seattle’s urban core

future performing arts complex

‘cunningham in the northwest’ at the cornish main gallery

DEVELOPING AN URBAN CAMPUS The goal of the Campaign for Cornish is to create a dynamic urban campus that inspires and transforms our students.

Your investment in the Campaign for Cornish helps complete this vision and ensures a vibrant future for our students and the arts.

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1 Performing Arts Complex

OLYMPIC MOUNTAINS

ELLIOTT BAY

Seattle Center

$38.9M

Main Campus Center

$1M

A new home for Dance and Music

An expanded Main Gallery

The Performing Arts Complex will unite the Cornish Campus and student body. The Complex will provide dance studios and practice rooms, a dance performance studio, a public recital hall and other spaces designed to inspire creativity and learning.

The Campaign will fund the expansion of the Cornish Main Gallery, which will offer greater exhibition opportunities and better community access through a street-level entrance.

N B ELLT O W Denny Park

Performing Arts Complex

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MAIN CAMPUS CENTER

QUEEN ANNE  SOUTH LAKE UNION 

 DOWNTOWN

Visual Arts Complex

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4 VISUAL Arts Complex

T e r ry

NOTION BUILDING

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$7.3M

Additional classrooms and new media arts space

This building will provide the essential space to create works of sculpture of any form, material or size. It will also house individual studios for each senior student in the Art Department.

The building will be renovated and expanded to provide additional classroom space. It will also be home to a new media arts space, providing a dedicated environment for study and practice in film, video and multimedia.

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RAISBECK PERFORMANCE HALL

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Notion Building

A new home for the Sculpture Program and Senior Art Studios

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$5.6M

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6 Raisbeck Performance Hall

art bfa exhibition

cornish college of the arts

‘cornish dance theater’ concert

Securing a legacy of innovation Art and innovation prosper in Seattle. Artists defy expectation. Entrepreneurs rattle tradition.

Community leaders make history. In every pocket of our city, individuals are leaving their mark, redefining the way we live and teaching us to see things differently.

An investment in the Cornish endowment guarantees that all of our students will have this chance to make an impact. It ensures that future generations of Cornish students will receive the distinctive, holistic and personalized arts education that has defined us for a century.

A robust endowment opens doors, making it possible for students to reach their dreams and find their voices. It readies them to define the future and secures the cultural vitality of our region for many years to come.

You never know if the students breezing through the halls at Cornish are the next Coltrane, Picasso or Martha Graham. But they are most certainly tomorrow’s innovators and artists, designers and entrepreneurs, setting out to create a world we have yet to imagine.

cornish college of the arts

Celebrating the future of the arts

100 years ago, Nellie Cornish instigated a cultural revolution.

She strong-armed great artists of her day to help her school take flight, trekking to the wilds of the far Northwest with them to teach a motley crew of budding young visionaries. She helped put Seattle on the cultural map.

Today, Cornish remains ripe with possibility. Our campus continues to buzz with creativity and intellectual curiosity as students from around the world work to develop their voices and crafts – preparing for a life in the arts and the world.

Your investment in the Campaign for Cornish is an investment in a great legacy of dreamers. Of imagination. It is an investment in the lasting character of our city, forever transformed by the young artists who come to Cornish to learn, create and inspire.

gamelan studio

‘the cherry sisters’ production

design bfa exhibition

art bfa exhibition Art Direction / Design: Imelda Loei (Design ‘01) and Jeffrey Underwood (Design ‘08) Printing: Wilson Marketing Group, Inc. © 2011 Cornish College of the Arts. All Rights Reserved.

editorial: Pyramid Communications

creative strategy: Imelda Loei (Design ‘01), Jeffrey Underwood (Design ‘08) and Pyramid Communications photo credits: Chris Bennion, Steve Hartson, Frank Huster, Joseph Lambert, Michelle Smith-Lewis, Kathryn Thomas, Dave Tosti-Lane, Winifred Westergard

inside cover: Nellie Cornish photo courtesy of Cornish College of the Arts Archives

front cover artwork: Kelsey Lee Offield (art ‘09)

If you’re going to make an investment in the arts, why not make an investment

in the point where art begins, where training of artists happens, where the dialogue from one generation of artists to the next takes place.

— John GordOn Hill Campaign Donor and Alumni Parent

Office of Institutional Advancement

Cornish Col l ege of the Arts

1000 Lenora Street Seattle, WA 98121

206.726.5064 advancement @ cornish.edu www.cornish.edu

A RT · DA N C E · DESIGN · M U SIC · P ERFORM A N C E P RO D U C TION · T H E ATER

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