Art Encounters
“In the twenty-first century, the Cornell Fine Arts Museum is evolving both by expanding its teaching mandate to help create a community of life-long learners, and by introducing programming that connects different worlds of art as well as different worlds of experience.”
-Ena Heller, Art Encounters: Selections from the Cornell Fine Arts Museum
The Cornell Fine Arts Museum, central Florida’s only academic teaching museum, embraces the liberal arts ethos of Rollins College to explore trans-historical and trans-generational exchanges through art. Learning how to think and generate conversations where multiple perspectives are shared is fundamental to a liberal arts education, and the museum strives to challenge not only the campus, but also the community to expand their modes of perceiving, comprehending, and communicating. To achieve this, the museum leverages its diverse collection in thoughtful, experimental, and innovative ways to encourage inquiry, observation, and open-ended thinking for learners of all ages. Therefore, through art encounters at the museum, visitors can think freely to achieve a fuller understanding of history and enhance their experiences of the world.
Though upon first look the works in this exhibition may appear incongruous, they offer multiple thematic and aesthetic connections for viewers to investigate and exercise new ways of thinking. With a range of media, timeframes, and geographic regions, this selection of works also introduces the permanent collection in one glance. The museum’s holdings, numbering around 5,600 works, spans from antiquity to present day with collection strengths in European, American, and contemporary art.
Most visitors begin their art encounters in this exhibition at the front of the museum in the Education Gallery. It includes extended interpretative texts as well as audio guides with additional information on the artists and the pieces on display. The works in this gallery are also featured in the museum’s permanent collection catalogue Art Encounters as well as the museum’s first children’s book Stories and Studios: Conversations and Projects.
