A Year of Community Building a Year of Community Building / 2015 – 2016 Dear Friends
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Cleveland Institute of Art Annual Report 2015 – 2016 A Year of Community Building A Year of Community Building / 2015 – 2016 Dear Friends, Never doubt the power of a mission-focused college to transform itself and its neighborhood. Institutions that grow stronger decade after decade invariably demonstrate skill at balancing old and new. Their leaders vigilantly protect bedrock values, but stay nimble with changing times and conditions. The past year at CIA exemplified the success of that strategy. For 134 years, the college has produced serious, culture-changing artists, designers, educators and entrepreneurs. Its alumni, present and former faculty, and community supporters quite rightly take pride in their association with the college. CIA has now enjoyed a full year of education and public programs on its new unified campus. The renovated and expanded George Gund Building, made possible by a successful capital campaign, contains some of the best of the old CIA: spaces where students are able to pursue the rigors of drawing, painting and design. Room, too, has been made for teaching the art professional of tomorrow: design thinking, new media and technologies, and student/client partnerships. CIA doesn’t stop at teaching students to make better work. Its stellar faculty and external partners in the business community create opportunities for real-world learning. Our graduates leave CIA prepared to fulfill crucial roles as artists and designers, and to meet the rising demands of applying these disciplines in meaningful ways. The most successful artists of tomorrow will be problem-solvers and community stakeholders. As an institution, CIA must do the same. I congratulate Cynthia Prior Gascoigne, new Chair of the CIA Board of Directors, as she leads the way into the future. I know the college will meet the high standards set over more than a century of education in art and design. Michael Schwartz, PhD Retired Chair, Board of Directors Michael Schwartz, PhD, left, and CIA President Cover: A brilliant procession of students, faculty Grafton Nunes stand with “Reconstructed Color” and staff celebrated the official move to the by Petra Soesemann. unified campus during Prism in August 2015. Our first year of operations in the unified campus at Cleveland Institute of Art brimmed with successes and milestones, reinforcing the college’s crucial role in the many communities to which it belongs. We began 2015 –16 with Spectrum, a series of events that showcased the historic transformation of CIA and its campus. After nearly a decade of planning and fundraising around a consolidated campus, these events provided CIA the opportunity to celebrate and engage our extended family of students, faculty, alumni, strategic partners, corporate sponsors and our neighbors in University Circle and across Northeast Ohio. We will long remember Spectrum as an exhilarating moment in which we celebrated our history and transitioned into a future bright with promise. Within this new physical learning environment, CIA students continued to achieve great things with their work, often in partnership with external organizations that included the Cleveland Metroparks Zoo, NASA, the Cleveland Museum of Natural History and Case Western Reserve University, to name a few. One extraordinary project for our animation students included working with director Paul Schrader on the creation of storyboards for the feature film “Dog Eat Dog,” which debuted at the Cannes film festival in spring. Under the auspices of CIA’s Creativity Works program, juniors in fine art and craft majors put their entrepreneurial skills to work in internships culminating in solo exhibitions and public art shows. Partner organizations included the Shaker Lakes Nature Center, the LGBT Center at Case Western Reserve University, and Praxis Fiber Workshop. I continue to take pride in the launch of full, four-year scholarships for students from the Cleveland Metropolitan School District. Erykah Townsend completed her first year at CIA, and is pursuing a double major in Painting and Sculpture + Expanded Media. The Community Partnership for Arts and Culture named four of our faculty members — Sarah Kabot, Kevin Kautenberger, Kathy Buszkiewicz and Jimmy Kuehnle — Creative Workforce fellows. Cuyahoga County taxpayers fund these prestigious grants. CIA alumni Paul Sobota ’05, Christi Birchfield ’06, Darius Steward ’08 and Nathan Ward ’14 also received the CPAC grants. As the school year closed, we bid goodbye to faculty members William Brouillard (Ceramics) and Richard Fiorelli (Foundation), and to library director Cristine Rom, all of whom retired after decades of dedication to CIA and its students. We miss them and wish them all the best. We also acknowledge the passing of three volunteer leaders at CIA: Harvey Oppman, Chaillé Tullis and Mabel “Skip” Watts. You can read more about their service to the college on the last page of this report. Grafton J. Nunes President and CEO 1 A Year of Community Building / 2015 – 2016 Creativity matters to our community Back in 2013, a New York Times headline blared “Culture Blooms in Cleveland” atop a story that trumpeted a “cultural renaissance” in University Circle. Today, the arts in Cleveland have only become more vibrant, and the Cleveland Institute of Art has been present in virtually every facet of that expansion. Through its leaders, faculty, students and alumni, CIA engages at every level to be an effective collaborator and neighbor. Introducing our new campus to the community Our University Circle community Starting in August 2015, CIA rolled out a suite of events Our campus unification aligned with the completion of the that were designed to introduce our new unified campus Uptown development, in which CIA has played a critical role. to different audiences. At Prism, President and CEO Today, University Circle throbs with the energy of new restaurants, Grafton Nunes presided over the last Convocation at retail businesses, college life and our amazing arts and culture Aitken Auditorium in the original George Gund Building institutions. As members of the neighborhood, we work with on East Boulevard, and then led a parade to the Euclid MOCA Cleveland in a number of ways that include an annual Avenue unified campus. The ceremony presented a furniture design contest and internships that are managed through wonderful opportunity for faculty, staff, students and our Career Center. alumni to bear witness to the experiences of the past Through course offerings and internships, CIA students and while opening the door on a new era. instructors collaborate with University Circle institutions in projects August also brought Lumiere, a special premiere night for that benefit all. For example, CIA animation students worked with the Cinematheque as it moved into the Peter B. Lewis counterparts at the Cleveland Institute of Music and the Cleveland Theater. In September, our opening celebration gala, Museum of Natural History to create a series of animations with Chromos, gave CIA supporters and donors an opportunity original art and music for the dome of the museum’s planetarium. to see some of the first fruits of their efforts during a night Other examples include students making plant studies at the of food, dancing and bidding on one-of-a-kind auction Cleveland Botanical Garden. First-year CIA students worked with experiences. And in October, families came out for our residents of the nearby Abington Arms, a senior living community, art-making open house, Kaleidoscope. to make work about objects that were meaningful to the residents. 2 In conjunction with Cleveland Hopkins International Airport, and with support from the Cleveland Foundation, CIA created 29 large canvases for the airport ticket lobby featuring Cleveland landmarks rendered through typography. CIA students created all the pieces in the series, which is known collectively as Type City Cleveland. Beyond specific initiatives, the CIA sphere of influence grows in the region, with alums working and showing in galleries and museums near and far. Alumni also teach art and design at all levels of education, and continue to pass their knowledge and expertise forward. As the CIA collaboration footprint grows, so does the success of the region’s creative economy, making Northeast Ohio a strong, vibrant community for all. And the occasion of the Republican National Convention meeting this year in Cleveland bolstered CIA’s relationships with its University Circle neighbors. Planning meetings began in May and included the University Circle cultural institutions, hospitals and safety forces. CIA became a hub for these meetings, where key players hashed out a plan to work alongside and communicate with RNC planners. Our Greater Cleveland arts, culture and business community Beyond University Circle, CIA worked hand in glove with institutions across the county to pass Issue 8, the continuation of a cigarette tax that provides funding for arts programming in Cuyahoga County. During the late spring, CIA partnered with LAND Studio to host Houston-based artist Keliy Anderson-Staley to create tintype portraits that became part of a series of public art installations along the Regional Transit Authority’s Red Line. Industrial design majors once again studied real-world transportation design challenges through courses sponsored by General Motors (fall semester) and with the boutique motorcycle company Cleveland CycleWerks (spring), owned by CIA alumnus Scott Colosimo ’04. Graphic design students competed in spring to design