The Dean's Letter

May 31, 2022

Looking Back / Looking Forward, a message from AAP Dean J. Meejin Yoon

Dear AAP Community —

The end of every academic year is cause for celebration as we wrap up nine months of intense work and study and see our graduates off to new beginnings. We celebrated the incredible class of 2022 this weekend. Congratulations, again, to all of our graduates. And, an enormous thank you to our dedicated faculty and staff who have supported them, and all of our students, throughout their time at Cornell and AAP.

This academic year, we marked the 150th anniversary of the Department of Architecture and 100 years of art education at Cornell. These milestones provided opportunities to reflect on our histories, look toward the future of pedagogy and practice, and reaffirm the collective responsibility we bear as an engaged community of artists, designers, researchers, scholars, educators, and mentors committed to building and shaping a better world.

We continue our anniversary celebrations this month, and I hope you will join us. We have invited all AAP alumni to campus during this year's Cornell Reunion Weekend (June 9-12) for a university-wide lecture, The Road Became A River: The Revelatory Potential of Fictive Architectural Worldscapes, by artist alum Olalekan Jeyifous (B.Arch. '99); a talk by alumni Peter Eisenman (B.Arch. '54) and Shelly Silver (B.F.A. '80) on their time at Cornell and the practices they went on to build afterward; and the opening of Measures and Meaning, an exhibition of works of art and architecture displayed across the AAP Galleries (June 6-September 2, 2022), curated by architecture faculty Sean Anderson, and in conjunction with the From the Collection: Three Alumni Artists exhibition curated by Andrea Inselmann at the Johnson Museum of Art. I had a chance to visit the Three Alumni Artists exhibition over commencement weekend. It was very inspiring to revisit work by Gordon Matta-Clark (B.Arch. '68), Louise Lawler (B.F.A. '69), and Alan Saret (B.Arch. '66), alongside that of our newest graduates and reflect on art and architecture education at Cornell, past and present.

Earlier this spring, we announced the launch of the Cornell Mui Ho Center for Cities to advance justice and sustainability in the built environment; and we will soon conclude multiple searches, including the CIVIC radical collaboration searches in Art and CRP, the social justice cohort searches in all three departments, searches for Strauch fellows in Architecture and CRP, and for the Associate Dean for Diversity and Equity position in the college. These initiatives stand to make a lasting impact on our community, our engaged pedagogies, and our fields.

The talents and efforts of all our faculty, staff, and students sustain our mission and vision for the future. As a creative and critically engaged community, we often see our work as unending, and so I want to thank you all for your constant and caring commitment this academic year, and wish you a summer that is healthy and balanced with time to rest and restore.

Sincerely,

Meejin

J. Meejin Yoon
Gale and Ira Drukier Dean of Architecture, Art, and Planning

Contact

Contact Office of the Dean

129 Sibley Dome
Phone: (607) 255-9110
aapdean@cornell.edu
Monday–Friday, 8 a.m.–4:30 p.m.

Previous Letters from the Dean

"Knowledge at its best"

January 22, 2024

Sharing Gratitude

December 14, 2023

Hope for the Possible

August 21, 2023
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