Department of Art Records

The first art course at Oberlin, “linear drawing,” appeared in the Preparatory (pre-collegiate) Course for Young Ladies in 1836, three years after the college’s founding. Two years later, drawing and painting were offered in the newly designed Ladies’ Course, which in 1875 was opened to men and called the Literary Course. Adelia A. Field Johnston (1837-1910), the first woman to receive full membership from the Oberlin faculty and the principal of the Ladies’ Department, taught the first art history courses in the history department in 1870.  Oberlin introduced the senior year one-term course called Lectures in Art in 1871, three years before Charles Eliot Norton inaugurated at Harvard his course The History of Fine Arts as Connected with Literature. In 1878, Lectures in Art assumed the more descriptive title Lectures on Architecture, Sculpture, Painting and Music, given by various members of the faculty. In 1891 that course title was dropped, and professor Johnston first offered her one-semester course in renaissance art, “historically studied with lectures illustrated by photographs.”

Beginning in 1899, oversize, mounted photographs of works of art were exhibited every two years, first in the College’s skating rink, and in Warner Gymnasium after its completion in 1901. Professor Johnston and other faculty at Oberlin, as well as a professor at the University of Michigan, gave lectures with paid admission during the exhibition on ancient art topics and the Van Eycks in 1905.  In 1904 seven hundred people from Oberlin and surrounding towns attended the series of ten lectures.

Upon Adelia Johnston’s retirement in 1907, her art history courses were transferred to the new Archeology and Art Department.  In that year students could study Greek, Roman, and Egyptian art, with an elective in Rembrandt.

In the 19^th century, drawing and painting at Oberlin were considered manual skills, taught in the Literary Course by a part-time teacher who also took students for private lessons. These courses were offered in French Hall until 1877, then Society Hall from 1885 until studio courses moved to the Allen Memorial Art Museum, completed in 1917. In 1890, the Literary Course disappeared from the catalogue, and drawing was available for credit to all members of the College. In 1912, the Department of Drawing and Painting was absorbed into the Department of Fine Arts.

The new Peter Dudley Allen Memorial Art Museum, commissioned by Dr. Allen, a trustee, was funded with a gift from Mrs. Allen in memory of her husband upon his death in 1915. It served as the home of the art department under the leadership of the museum director, Clarence Ward, an art historian. Ward held his positions as director and chair for thirty-three years. Dr. Allen’s will bequeathed a professorship, the Adelia A. Field Johnston Endowment for Instruction in the History and Appreciation of Art. Clarence Ward was the first to hold the professorship. The college catalogue announced the first programs for majors in fine arts in 1918. In the 1917-18 academic year, the department offered Appreciation of Art, Ancient Art, History of Greek Sculpture, Ancient Architecture, Greek Vase-Painting, Medieval Art, Renaissance Sculpture, Italian Painting, Modern Art, Medieval and Renaissance Architecture, Elements of Architectural Design, History of Ornament, Theory and Practice of Art (two semesters), Free-Hand Drawing, Free-Hand Machine Drawing, Water Color Painting, Principles of Design, and Design in Theory and Practice. The Teacher’s Course in Art Education offered, in addition to the introductory art courses, Lettering, Clay Modeling, Industrial Art, Junior Composition, and Life Sketch Class.  The art resources consisted of 5,000 photographs, 10,000 slides, and 2,000 books. By 1958, they numbered 34,500 photographs, 20,000 books, and over 100,000 slides.

The Baldwin Lecture Fund, established in 1928 by Gertrude Baldwin Woods, provided funds for bringing noted artists and art scholars to campus. This developed into a seminar taught by the artist or scholar for a period of about two weeks.  The Baldwin Seminar brought, for example, Robert Motherwell, Sherman E. Lee, H. W. Janson, E. H. Gombrich, R. Buckminster Fuller, Oleg Grabar, Linda Nochlin, Robert Venturi and Denise Scott Brown, Donald Judd, Miriam Schapiro, and many other important figures in the fine arts.

The art department offered a graduate program in art history for sixty years, from the 1933-34 academic year through 1993-94.  Graduate students assisted in teaching classes and worked in the slide library, and also served as role models for the undergraduates.

By the beginning of the 1930s, the art museum’s holdings had grown considerably, and the art department badly needed faculty and administrative offices, lecture halls with projection booths, studio space, and an auditorium for events with visiting lecturers and artists. The widow of Dr. Dudley Peter Allen made a generous gift to finance a new wing that doubled the museum’s size. Clarence Ward, a trained architect, designed the 1937 addition to meet these needs, on the back end of the original Cass Gilbert museum, such that there appeared to be no change in style or materials. Ward was also responsible for introducing technology in the lecture rooms, enabling teaching staff to remotely control two automatic lantern slide projectors from the podium, and to bring in radio broadcasts or recordings through a loud speaker on the stage. A microphone on the desk made it possible for the lecturer to be heard in any other room in the building. Other art departments quickly followed Professor Ward’s innovations.

After the Second World War, space was again a major issue for the department, as it was for the college in general.  The formation at Oberlin of the Intermuseum Conservation Association, the first non-profit regional art conservation center in 1952, meant that the department had to give up space for the labs. To conserve space, the ICA also occupied a large trailer east of the art building. For the first 50 years of its existence, the organization was located in the art building at Oberlin.

In 1953 R. Buckminster Fuller was a guest artist in the Baldwin Seminar series, during which time he directed students in the erection of a temporary, geodesic dome frame using prefabricated parts. This inspired the art studio faculty to petition Oberlin College President Robert Fuller for modest funds in the amount of $4,000 to erect two domes for studio space. Prefabricated components were purchased and delivered, while students and faculty dug footers and poured foundations. The domes were assembled entirely with student and faculty labor. The structures served as studio and classroom space until the materials began to rot, and were replaced with architect-designed, connecting octagon structures on the old dome foundations in 1983.

In the 1970s, the College committed to a new art building to complement the original art museum building and its attached 1937 addition. The College selected Robert Venturi to design the new Postmodern wing, completed in 1977.  The new wing expanded exhibition space for a contemporary art gallery for the art museum, housed the art library, which previously took up the second floor of the art museum, met the need for better studios and classrooms, and housed the Intermuseum Conservation Association (ICA), which provided courses for a master’s degree in art conservation through the College from 1970 to 1978. When space became an issue again in the late 1990s, the problem was somewhat alleviated when the ICA moved to its present Cleveland location in 2003.

A new Book Studies Concentration launched in the fall of 2016 is an interdisciplinary course of study for students, brought together by a committee of faculty and staff from the departments of Art, Anthropology, East Asian Studies, English, History, Music, and the library. The Art Department contributed four courses relevant to the concentration, including advanced book arts and a course entitled Re-Imagining the Book.

Sources Consulted

Oberlin College Annual Catalogue, Oberlin College Archives, College General (RG 00), Series 2, Subseries 1.

College General (RG 0), Series 16, Repetitive Programs and Lists, Baldwin Seminar.

Paul Arnold, “A Few Random Thoughts about Oberlin’s Art Department,” unpublished manuscript prepared for the College Archivist, Archives case file, February 4, 1999.

Laurine M. Bongiorno, “The Fine Arts in Oberlin, 1836-1918,” Allen  Memorial Art Museum Bulletin, Vol. XV, No. 3, Spring 1958, 101-115.

Edward Dickinson, “The Art Exhibit,” The Hi-O-Hi, 1905, 143-147.

Louise E. Lord, “The Oberlin Art Association,” March 15, 1913, in The Hi-O-Hi, 1914, 154.

Frank Roos, Jr., “Art Department, Oberlin College,” Parnassus, Vol. 12, No. 7 (Nov. 1940), 22-24. Accessed from JStor, 1/27/2017.

Intermuseum Conservation Association website, About page, accessed 1/24/2017 at http://www.ica-artconservation.org/about/.

Note written by Anne Cuyler Salsich.