The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art: A Cornell University Treasure
Located in the art quad of Cornell University, the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art is a free art museum that features art from a multitude of artists. The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art at Cornell University welcomes visitors to experience original works of art across a wide spectrum of global traditions, time periods, and media for education, inspiration, and delight. Since its beginning the Museum has been open to all without charge. Today, the Johnson Museum’s permanent collection numbers more than 40,000 works, spanning six millennia and encompassing art from most world cultures.
A History Rooted in Vision
President Deane Waldo Malott established the original University Art Museum in 1953. The A. D. White House was renovated to house Cornell's art collections. The current museum, constructed in 1973, is named after its primary benefactor, Herbert Fisk Johnson Jr., a Cornell Class of 1922 graduate, head of S.C. Johnson & Son. The Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art opened in 1973. Unveiled in May 1973 and costing $5 million (about $29 million in today’s dollars), the 60,000-square-foot building gave a dramatic new home to the University’s art collection, which for the previous twenty years had been located in the A.D. White House.
Architectural Marvel
The Johnson Museum of Art was designed by architect I.M. Pei. The museum opened in 1973 as a free of charge museum where students and residents alike could experience art pieces from across the globe.
Design and Construction
In an essay in the 1998 edition of A Handbook of the Collection, John Sullivan III ’62, BArch ’63-a member of Pei’s firm who served as architect-in-charge on the project-recalls the design process that began with the awarding of the commission in spring 1968. “It was to be the third museum building created by the ten-year-old firm, and the largest, most complex one to that date,” he writes. As Sullivan goes on to observe, the concept for the Johnson Museum was “first about response to its site: its great expanse, its limitations, its orientation, its relationships, and the resultant accountability.” In early summer, the design team took a long walk to survey its future home, along with University officials, the museum’s director, and a landscape architect. “The site was found to have two distinct aspects, each requiring a unique response; a conundrum, as they were in opposition,” Sullivan writes.
Unique Features
The Johnson Museum of Art was designed by architect I.M. Pei. It can be characterized by its fifth floor, which cantilevers over the open aired sculpture garden. It was designed so that it would not block the view of Cayuga Lake, and offers a panoramic view of the same from its north and west sides. The unique location of the museum presented several architectural challenges; building space was limited, and it could not overwhelm the view of Cayuga Lake or the nearby Arts Quad. The ultimate solution was a structure that’s at once solid and oddly ethereal, with its blocky concrete elements counterbalanced by swaths of glass and surprising absences of form-most dramatically, the fifth floor that cantilevers over the main entrance, which is housed in a box that seems to nestle beneath that floating upper story. “The lobby, like an overture, establishes the themes and mood of the building,” Sullivan writes. “In this instance the prelude identifies the ambiguity of enclosure: it is both an interior and an exterior space.
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Recognition
In 1975, the building won the National Honor Award from the American Institute of Architects.
Expansion and Renovation
In 2011, the museum opened renovated spaces and a 16,000-square-foot extension inspired by the original plans drawn up by Pei Cobb Freed & Partners. In 2011, the University completed a $22 million renovation and expansion of the Johnson; Pei had retired, but Sullivan served as lead designer. The head architect was John L. Sullivan III.
Legal Dispute
In 2015, Cornell filed a lawsuit against Pei Cobb Freed & Partners for "architectural malpractice," citing an "inherently flawed and materially defective" design of the new wing.
Appreciation
Mulcahy, who was on the Cornell faculty for more than three decades, long taught an architecture survey course for non-majors. He’d often use campus buildings as handy and accessible examples-the Johnson being one of his favorites. “It shows students what architecture is capable of,” he says. “It’s not about looking at the building, it’s about seeing the world through it. It looks like a sculptural object, a self-indulgent statement. But it reframes the world, outside and inside, for its occupants. For Simitch, one of the original building’s most striking aspects is that it “belies scale”: viewed from a distance, it’s not clear how big a person is in relation to it. “From the city, one looks up to it as a kind of abstract sculpture,” she says. “It has a monumental position on the hill when seen from the valley-whereas from the campus perspective, it’s much more an extension of the space and the Arts Quad. Simitch sees the Johnson, like the Everson, as an example of one of the world’s premier architecture practices at the top of its game. “I think it’s one of the firm’s most powerful works,” she says.
Permanent Collections: A World of Art
The eight-floored museum contains three permanent exhibit floors, as well as three other floors that contain traveling art exhibitions. The three permanent collections are located in the first, second and fifth floors of the Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art, displaying works of different periods from all over the world.
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First Floor: 19th Century to Today
The first floor contains art from the 19th century to today. Located in The Harris Gallery on the first floor of the museum is a collection of gifts donated by David M. Solinger, Cornell 1926. This exhibit features nine works of modern art, including a sculpture of a person walking, facing the hallway as if the statue is walking with the viewers.
Second Floor: Pre-1800s Art
The second floor exhibits pre-1800s art. The museum also features a sculpture court and Cosmos installation outside of the second floor that is open seasonally.
Fifth Floor: Asian Art
The fifth floor is dedicated to Asian art. The fifth floor gallery features the museum’s collection of Asian art. The collection features paintings, tapestries, ceramics and etchings from many East Asian, South Asian and Pacific countries and artists. This floor allows Ithaca residents to explore the rich culture of Asia and the diverse cultures and different art styles of each country.
Collection Highlights
The permanent collection consists of more than 35,000 works of art. Most notable is the George and Mary Rockwell Asian Art collection. Spanning from the Middle Ages to the 20th century, the European collection includes works by Albrecht Dürer, William Hogarth, Francisco Goya, Édouard Manet, Charles-François Daubigny, Edgar Degas, William-Adolphe Bouguereau, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec, Otto Dix, Fernand Léger and Henri Matisse. There are also extensive holdings of American artists, including Evelyn Metzger, Georgia O'Keeffe and Andy Warhol, as well as members of the Hudson River School and the American Impressionists to contemporary art. The Collection of Prints, Drawings, and Photographs consists of more than 22,000 works, including works by Berenice Abbott, Robert Frank, Alfred Stieglitz, and Garry Winogrand. Its fifth floor houses the museum's extensive Asian collection. One of the most powerful pieces is a sculpture that features a serpentine, skull-like bed that has a television with a moving eye on it. Above the sculpture is a hammock and behind it is a gong.
Morgan Japanese Garden
Located on the northwest side of the 2011 wing building, the Morgan Japanese Garden was built at the Johnson Museum through the generous support of Rebecca Morgan, Class of 1960, and James Morgan, Class of 1960. The garden abstracts the story of the Three Laughers of the Tiger Glen, with the protagonists represented by three upright boulders and a cleft lined with small stones through a field of moss representing the torrent of the ravine. The sound of running water in the nearby stone basin and the visual illusion of running water in the ravine are intended to mix within the mind of the viewer.
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Temporary Exhibitions and Special Features
The museum also features two other temporary exhibitions, including works from the Cornell Department of Art. The exhibit features paintings, photographs, videos, sculptures, drawings, ceramics and thread art pieces made by 18 Cornell art faculty members. In the 1L floor gallery, the museum is features Salvadorian visual artist and healer Guadalupe Maravilla’s “Armonía de la Esfera (Harmony of the Sphere).” It features pieces by Maravilla as well as pieces from the museum’s permanent collections from other artists, selected by the artist.
Educational and Community Engagement
In a typical year, Cornell’s Johnson Museum of Art sees more than 80,000 visitors-not only University students, faculty, and staff but local residents, alumni, tourists, schoolchildren, and more. The museum also acts as a conference center and lecture hall. Although for-credit classes are conducted by Cornell's academic departments rather than the museum, the museum does provide curriculum-structured gallery sessions for specific classes. It also hosts faculty-conducted gallery tours and course-related exhibitions. The museum also hosts thematic tours for local school student field trips. The Johnson Museum Club is a Cornell student group that promotes awareness of the Johnson Museum's facilities and collections.
Director's Vision
After Jessica Martinez took the reins at the Johnson Museum in July 2019, she had just one full semester of “normal” life on the Hill before the COVID lockdown struck in the middle of spring 2020-upending operations for one of Cornell’s premier venues for public outreach and cultural enrichment. Just the fourth director in the museum’s history, Martinez spent much of her career at Harvard, where she earned an undergraduate degree in fine arts (from Radcliffe) and a doctorate in the history of art and architecture; prior to coming to Cornell, she led the Division of Academic and Public Programs at the Harvard Art Museums.
Impact and Significance
The Johnson Museum is a space where art lovers can look at colorful, meaningful pieces of art, or learn a culture through their depictions of different nations’ histories. Carlene Mwaura, a Cornell senior who is one of the student employees at the museum, expressed her interest in the museum’s art pieces from different parts of the world. “One thing I like about the museum is that it has a really diverse array of exhibits,” Mwaura said. “So it’s not just focused on European Centric art and artists. It’s diverse.
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