Cornell Council for the Arts

Stan Taft has taught at SUNY Purchase, the University of Iowa, and in the Cornell art department since 1985. Solo exhibitions include those at the Josef Gallery in New York City and the Parnas Gallery in Los Angeles. A selection of group exhibitions include Figurative Realism: Narrative Painting at SUNY-Cortland, the Alex Rosenberg Gallery and Styria Gallery in New York City, the Davidson Gallery in Seattle, Convergence Gallery in San Francisco, the Museum of Contemporary Arts in Baltimore, and the American Center for Physics in Washington, DC. He received a B.F.A. from the California College of Arts and Crafts in 1967 and an M.F.A. from Fort Wright College in 1969.

Kevin Ernste is a composer, performer, and teacher of composition and electronic music at Cornell University where he is Director of the Cornell Electroacoustic Music Center. He did graduate work in Music Composition at the Eastman School of Music (MA, PhD). In 2005, he was the Acting Director and lecturer at the Eastman Computer Music Center and Co-director of the ImageMovementSound festival.

Austin Bunn, a scholar working in the areas of creative writing, dramatic writing and fiction, joined the Department of Performing and Media Arts in 2012 as an assistant professor in dramatic writing and screenwriting.

Bunn, who received the Iowa Arts Fellowship to the Iowa Writers’ Workshop at the University of Iowa, received his M.F.A. in playwriting and his M.F.A. in fiction from the University of Iowa. His theses were Versus, a full-length comedy, and The Brink, a short-story collection. Bunn received his B.A. in American Studies from Yale University.

Bunn’s recent publications include “A Killer Life: How an Independent Film Producer Survives Deals and Disasters in Hollywood and Beyond,” “Bonsai Kitten,” a story in Monster Manual, “What Gets Saved,” in Ghosttown, “Bromosexual” in The Advocate, and “Curious Father” in Bloom.

Cathy Klimaszewski received her B.F.A. and M.F.A. in Musem Studies at Syracuse University. Her current work focuses on public access, education, and textiles.  She is the primary investigator of digital acces and the study center interpretation project at the museum, and is working on a project entitled Objects and Their Makers: New Insights.

Steve Pond received his Ph.D from the University of California, Berkeley. His scholarly interests center on jazz and musics of the African Diaspora.  His work generally focuses on historiography, especially as it relates to issues of authenticity and authority, race, ethnicity, class, gender, and other indentity frameworks.  Pond teaches graduate courses on theoretical and research issues in ethnomusicology.  He also teaches undergraduate survey courses and offers specialized courses in American sub-cultural musics, post-World War II jazz, and rhythm-and-blues.  For the past five years, Pond has played and sponsored Cornell's Brazillian music group, Deixa Sambar.

Sheila Danko received her bachelor's degree in Architecture from the University of Michigan in 1978 and her Master's in Industrial Design from the Rhode Island School of Design in 1983. Professor Danko's current professional activities include membership with the International Leadership Association, membership with Interior Design Educators Council, service as Ad Hoc Reviewer of Journal of Interior Design, Editorial Board member of Research Design Connections, and Refereed Instructor for Interior Design Educators Council Academy.  

Her scholarlship focuses on the intersection of design and leadership.  Her work seeks to expand the concept of design beyond material artifact to include an understanding of how design - both process and product - can be a tool for leadership and social change across a wide range of disciplines. Questions include: How can design support strategic business planning and sustainable business practice? How do leaders in socially responsible business define and operationalize design? How can we educate a new generation of leaders to embrace a whole systems view of design?

Professor Danko has been named a J. Thomas Clark Professor of Entrepreneurship for her research entitled "Values-led Entrepreneurship by Design." She has received significant industry, academic and fellowship awards including best paper at INTENT/International Entrepreneurship and Training conference in the UK for her work expanding entpreneurship education; a Bronze Award in the IFI/Nagoya International Design Competition, Japan, for her submission entitled "Restorative Composites" which proposed a new line of architectural finishes using recycled textile waste; a Polsky/FIDER Endowment for her study in creative design process and its linkages to design education; and an ASID/Wool Bureau Natural Fibers Fellowship for her design work exploring nontraditional applications of fiber to interior architecture.
 

Kiko joined the Cornell Concert Series staff in May 2004. Earlier concert office experience includes work for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Music of the Baroque. Ithacans might recall her - and her range of musical interests - as the former CD-buyer at Bookery II. Kiko holds degrees from Oberlin College and the University of Chicago.

Stephanie Wiles has a bachelor's degree in modern languages from Hobart and William Smith Colleges (1981), an M.A. in art history from Hunter College (1987) and a Ph.D. in art history from the City University of New York Graduate Center (2001). A member of the Association of Art Museum Directors, she also serves on the editorial advisory board of the journal Master Drawings.

As director, Wiles will oversee museum operations and a staff of 22; a collection of more than 35,000 artworks including extensive holdings in Asian and contemporary art; and an educational and outreach mission with programming serving the Cornell campus, the local community and the region. The museum building, by architect I.M. Pei, opened in 1973, and a 16,500-square-foot expansion, in a new wing based on Pei's original design, will have a public grand opening Oct. 15.

Mary Fessenden received her M.A. in Arts Administration from SUNY Binghamton. Prior to joining Cornell, Fessenden was marketing and publicity director and general manager of Central Casting Theatre Company in Ithaca.

Fessenden holds a master's degree in arts administration from SUNY Binghamton and has held internships with Sydney Opera House in Australia, among other arts organizations.

In addition to her responsibilities as managing director at Cornell Cinema, Fessenden also programmed the IthaKid Film Festival, something she will continue to do as director.

Mark Cruvellier is associate professor and chair of the Department of Architecture at Cornell University.  His interests and areas of expertise include tall building structures, bridge design, and the development of pedagogical materials for structures in the context of architecture. He worked for several years in New York City analyzing some of that city's tallest and most slender buildings, and then in Vancouver on several unusual bridge designs. He received his Ph.D from McGill University.

At Cornell since 1991, Cruvellier regularly teaches classes on fundamental structural concepts and the design of structural systems. He has recently co-authored the textbook The Structural Basis of Architecture (Routledge, 2011) together with colleagues Bjorn Sandaker and Arne Eggen of the Oslo School of Architecture and Design.

Shirley Samuels received her B.A. summa cum laude, M.A., and Ph.D in English from the University of California, Berkeley. Her current work spans the topics of English, American Studies, Feminist Gender and Sexuality Studies, and Visual Culture.

Peter Trowbridge is a Landscape Architect and Fellow of the ASLA, and currently combines research and practice in sustainable design and revegetation of landfill sites, urban land, and other difficult environments.  His coursework engages plant identification, planting design, construction technology and graduate and undergraduate studios that focus on landscape rehabilitation and ecology.  He maintains an active practice, Trowbridge and Wolf, contributes to Landscape Architecture Magazine on a regular basis, and is an editor of the Journal of Landscape and Urban Planning. Trowbridge received his B.S./B.L.A. in Environmental Science and Forestry from Syracuse University, his A.S. from Alfred State University, and his M.L.A. from Harvard University.

John Robert Lennon is an associate professor and Director of the Creative Writing Program at Cornell University.  He is the author of six novels and a collection of stories, and has been teaching English and creative writing at Cornell since 2006. He received his B.A. in English from the University of Pennsylvania in 1992 and his M.F.A. in Creative Writing from the University of Montana in 1995.

Artist and art historian Iftikhar Dadi is an associate professor in Cornell’s Department of History of Art with broad interests in the relation between art practice in the contexts of modernity, globalization, urbanization, mediatization, and postcolonialism.

Dadi has authored numerous scholarly works, including the recent book Modernism and the Art of Muslim South Asia. Curatorial activities include Unpacking Europe at the Museum Boijmans Van Beuningen, Rotterdam, and Tarjama/Translation at Queens Museum of Art and Cornell’s Herbert F. Johnson Museum of Art. He serves on the editorial board of Art Journal and is a contributing editor of the international journal Bio-Scope: South Asian Screen Studies.  

 As an artist, Dadi works collaboratively with Elizabeth Dadi. Their work investigates the salience of popular urban and media cultures in the construction of memory, borders, and identity in contemporary globalization. Their work is frequently realized in large-scale installations and has been exhibited and published internationally.

 He received his Ph.D. in history of art from Cornell.

Ann T. Lemley is a Professor in the College of Human Ecology and is currently Chair of the Department of Fiber Science and Apparel Design.  Her faculty appointment is a combination of Research and Outreach.  Her research goal is to study the presence of and degradation of contaminants in the environment, particularly water and indoor dust, in order to assess and decrease risks through removal or treatment.  Projects have focused on pesticides and other organic contaminants.  She and her group develop analytical methods for low levels of contaminants and study treatment methods for removal including degradation kinetics and mechanisms.  They are exploiting basic methods of advanced oxidation, particularly the electrochemical Fenton method, to reduce chemical contaminant risk in water.  Her Cooperative Extension Program focuses on environmental issues such as drinking water quality, protection of water, household chemicals, pesticides in the home, and household hazardous waste. 

Lemley received her B.A. in Chemistry and education from St. John's University in 1966, her M.S. in Chemistry from Cornell University in 1970, and her Ph.D in Chemistry from Cornell University.

Amy Villarejo's areas of interest include documentary and experimental film, television, theories of feminism and sexuality, queer film and culture, and America in the mid-twentieth century.  She is currently co-editing an anthology, "Capital Q: Marxism after Queer Theory" (forthcoming, NYU Press), with Jordana Rosenberg, and is finalizing a book on television entitled "Ethereal Queer." Her articles on documentary film, activist media, television and queer culture have appeared in numerous journals such as New German Critique and Social Text, and she has also contributed to a variety of edited volumes and book projects.

Villarejo received her B.A. in English from Bryn Mawr in 1985, her M.A. in English from the University of Pittsburgh in 1991, and her Ph.D. in Film Studeis from the University of Pittsburgh in 1997.