Measures and Meaning

Architecture at 150 | Art at 100

Visit an exhibition of selected artworks by the AAP community on view across the college's galleries and exhibition spaces celebrating Architecture's 150th academic year, and 100 years of art education at Cornell. Measures and Meaning is curated by Sean Anderson, Associate Professor of Architecture and Director of the B.Arch. Program.

A century can be "long," as conceived by scholars of the 18th century, or short, when redefined by curator and scholar Okwui Enwezor, yet rarely encompass the breadth of temporalities, ideas, materials, and forces that signify their structuring. In these days of immediacy, is it possible to understand such passages as something more than time itself? How do we measure where we have come from and where we may be going?

Measures and Meaning brings together works by 20 artists and architects to celebrate the centenary of Cornell University's Department of Art and 150 years of the Department of Architecture. Each work has been chosen to embody the simultaneity of conflicts found within past, present, and future. On display across AAP's galleries and the Arts Quad, the exhibition not only articulates contrasting practices and ideas, but also brings to light the ways in which the college has been at the forefront of some of the most important pedagogical discussions shaping the built environment and artistic practices today.

The exhibition presents overlapping narratives, pivotal assertions, and transformations at multiple scales by selected alumni and faculty with works of art and architecture. Measures and Meaning will include works by Visiting Critic Nidaa Aboulhosn, Art; Sekou Cooke (B.Arch. '99); Carol Diamond (B.F.A. '82); Olalekan Jeyifous (B.Arch. '99); Associate Professor Jolene K. Rickard, History of Art and Visual Studies, and Amanda Williams (B.Arch. '97), among others.

In conjunction with the AAP exhibition, a selection of works from the Johnson Museum of Art's permanent collection by Louise Lawler (B.F.A. '69), Gordon Matta-Clark (B.Arch. '68), and Alan Saret (B.Arch. '66) will be on view until August 21 at the Museum, curated by Andrea Inselmann, the Johnson's curator of modern and contemporary art.

Measures and Meaning shares in radical ways of seeing the structures of the past to imagine possible futures.

Full List of Participants

• Visiting Critic Nidaa Aboulhosn, Art
• Associate Professor Roberto Bertoia, Art
• Nina Cooke John (B.Arch.'95)
• Sekou Cooke (B.Arch. '99)
• Carol Diamond (B.F.A. '82)
• Professor Donald Greenberg, Computer Science
• Visiting Critic Julianne Hunter, Art
• Olalekan Jeyifous (B.Arch. '99)
• Professor Emerita Jean Locey, Art
• Assistant Professor Leslie Lok, Architecture
• Assistant Professor Farzin Lotfi-Jam, Architecture
• Christine McDonald (M.F.A. '22)
• Erin Miller (M.F.A. '22)
• Associate Professor Caroline O'Donnell, Architecture
• Associate Professor Emeritus Greg Page, Art
• Associate Professor Jolene K. Rickard, History of Art
• Associate Professor Jenny Sabin, Architecture
• Professor Andrea Simitch (B.Arch. '79), Architecture
• Visiting Lecturer David Todd (B.A./B.F.A. '06), Art
• Amanda Williams (B.Arch. '97)

To view the full programming of our anniversaries click here.

AAP gallery locations

• Bibliowicz Family Gallery
• John Hartell Gallery
• Olive Tjaden Gallery
• Experimental Gallery
• East Sibley Exhibition Hallway
• West Sibley Exhibition Hallway
• Arts Quad
• Milstein Stairs

Sean Anderson is Associate Professor and Undergraduate Program Director in the Department of Architecture at Cornell University College of Architecture, Art, and Planning. Prior to arriving in Ithaca, he was the Associate Curator in the Department of Architecture and Design at the Museum of Modern Art (MoMA). At MoMA, he organized the exhibitions Insecurities: Tracing Displacement and Shelter (2016–17) and Thinking Machines: Art and Design in the Computer Age, 1959–89 (2017–18) and led four iterations of the Young Architects Program at MoMA PS1. He has also been responsible for and collaborated on MoMA's permanent collection galleries including the ongoing Building Citizens and 2019's Surrounds. Co-organized with Mabel O. Wilson, Reconstructions: Architecture and Blackness in America, the first exhibition ever at MoMA to highlight the work of African American and African Diasporic architects, artists, and designers, concluded in May 2021. In February 2023, he will organize the second exhibition of architecture at the Dhaka Art Summit in Bangladesh.