Two Cornell College students, Stephen
Coburn and Jessica Meis, are learning
firsthand that exploring the world of
art history can be a pretty amazing
experience. They're getting their hands
on art that many don't even know exists.
This is a collection of old European
drawings, old master drawings that we've
acquired. They were given to the school in
the 1950s and no one's really taken an
in-depth look at them except for in the
90s an appraisal company did do an
appraisal for us for insurance purposes
but we're finding that that appraisal
wasn't very accurate and there's a lot
of information on these drawings that we
still have to discover. These students
are spending the 10 weeks of the Cornell
Summer Research Institute working with
professor Christina Penn-Goetsch to examine
the drawings that make up what's called
the stone and shine collection. This
whole project of looking at the Sun and
shine collection is about making these
58 drawings from the 16th to the 19th
century available and accessible to the
public. And, doing some research too.
Because in fact we've already started to
re attribute works of art. The students are exploring every facet of the drawings by removing
the art from the frames, taking notes, and
looking at the fine details. Coburn and
Meis are photographing each drawing to
create a website. Now everyone can have
access to it online easily even if
they're not on campus. They'll also
create a gallery show of these unique
pieces. Drawings are used in this period
of the early modern world both as
practice pieces, sketches after works or
they're preliminary drawings. Preparations
for the final works of art. The drawings
depict everything from horses to
religious scenes. These student
researchers are finding surprises around
every corner. There was one drawing the
other day, I lifted the mat up and then
a mount fell off the back and I was like
oh no what did I do but it was just
something that - the framers didn't attach the
actual drawing - and so we found another
drawing on the back of that so it's
just very exciting, we find something new
every day. They're digging into history
but they're not just learning a lot
about the past, they're also learning a
lot about the future. Just cementing
further the fact that I really love art
history and that this is what I want to
do, the field that I want to go into, but
also this opens up a lot of doors, it's a
really big opportunity to be able to
research these drawings firsthand and to
have this experience under my belt.
And Jessica too, it really helps in the future with getting jobs or internships or
museums or anything. This is just one
story detailing all of the summer
research projects going on at Cornell
College. Watch for others on the Cornell
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