Milton S.F. Curry '88 sees nothing but opportunity for the Cornell Council for the Arts (CCA) as he steps down as director of the council after six years.

Robert Barker/University Photography

Associate Professor Milton Curry in his Sibley Hall office.

"There is a capacity for embracing Cornell as a place for innovation and opportunity," Curry said in a recent interview.

Curry, an associate professor of architecture, will be succeeded by associate professor of music Judith Kellock, who has been appointed CCA interim director through June 30, 2009.

While Curry was at the helm, the council launched several new initiatives, ranging from student and alumni artist awards and public sculpture projects to participation in an international design exhibition.

"The thing I'm most proud of was the CCA Xdesigngroup, a collaboration with students and faculty to produce an entry in the International Furniture Fair in New York City in 2006, the second-largest design exhibition in the world," Curry said.

The Xdesigngroup was featured with its entry, a plywood chair designed to use a minimum of materials, in an illustrated New York Times article about the exhibition.

A 2007 sculptural installation by Patrick Dougherty in Collegetown, between Sheldon Court and the Schwartz Center, was also among CCA's recent successes.

"It took 80 meetings to get it built, including [meetings on] fire safety," Curry said. "People did like it, and it was a catalyst for rethinking the physical space in front of the Schwartz Center. We've put the CCA on a much more aggressive footing in terms of artistic experimentation. Hopefully, that will continue. These two initiatives can be seen as a catalyst for much more sustained cross-disciplinary initiatives at Cornell."

Other CCA initiatives during Curry's term include:

• The Cornell University Eissner Artist Award for alumni artists, first established in 1977 and endowed in 2006 by Bruce and Judith Eissner. The most recent recipient is composer Christopher Rouse '77. Curry said Pulitzer Prize-winning novelist Junot Diaz, MFA '95, has been confirmed for the next award.
• The CCA Undergraduate Artist Award, given annually. "For the student selected, we support a performance presentation or exhibition after they've graduated," Curry said. Recipients include Katherine Galasso '06 and Jacqueline Stluka '07.
• The CCA Emerging Artist Awards, for young alumni artists who received CCA grant support in the previous four years. Recipients also participate in a group show at the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art.
• The CCA Individual Artist grants for students, faculty and staff were increased to $750 from $500.

The council, founded in 1965, has a small staff -- a director, a program coordinator (Pamela Lafayette) and a part-time work-study student. The CCA works with seven arts departments in four colleges at Cornell, as well as the Johnson Museum, the Cornell Concert Series and Cornell Cinema.

With funding from the Office of the Provost, the council distributes $80,000 in project and programming support and grants each year -- including grants to Cornell faculty of up to $3,000 for research projects consistent with CCA goals -- and produces several publications.

"Going forward, the challenge for Cornell is to motivate talented faculty to be more productive and more experimental in their teaching, to really enhance the notion that the university can be a place for design innovation," Curry said. "That's going to attract the best young faculty and get us out of the silos of the seven different colleges."

He sees more opportunities for intellectual engagement among design, arts, humanities and science faculty members at Cornell, collaborating on projects that will also involve students.

"Highly motivated students and talented faculty can be producing new products and new conceptions of material innovation in design, from architecture to industrial design to fashion design," Curry said. "We need to have strong disciplines, along with some form of a centralized source of excellence and research funding, and ideally all of our arts departments attaining a top-five rank, and [Cornell establishing] an institute for the arts supporting the most innovative work."