Featured Stories and Letters on the History of Cornish

 

Theater Department Centennial Approaches: Why It's a Big Deal  — In 1918, Nellie Cornish invited a married couple, English poet Maurice Browne and American actress Ellen Van Volkenburg, to found a theater department at her school. When they accepted, it was an astounding coup for the school, especially since Cornish was but four years old at the time. The Brownes were famous across the US as the founders of the Chicago Little Theatre, the flagship company of an art theatre movement in America.

Cornish Was Very Nearly Burke College of the Arts  — Today, students and faculty gather every year to teach and learn at Cornish College of the Arts. It could have been very different school under a very different name, had events of 1926 played out differently.

Bonnie Bird & Company  —  Orniginally found in the Cornish Magazine of February 2016 and reprinted with permission, the article tells the story of a remarkable time at the end of the Nellie years, when alumna Bonnie Bird became director of dance and launched the career of Merce Cunningham and, to a great extent, John Cage.

Back Matter: Unpublished Letters from Nellie Cornish’s Autobiography — Ella Lemon Ramhorst '26 was instrumental in producing Miss Aunt Nellie, the posthumously printed autobiography of Nellie Cornish. The letters to and from her give a revealing glimpse of this group's unedited feelings on all that Cornish had been under "Miss A.N." and what they felt the school had become.

John Dewey's Unrecognized Triumph — Recent research has proven that Cornish was in the forefront of the Progressive movement in adult education, tracing its roots to the thought of John Dewey. This means that Cornish has a deep pedigree in American education, and that Dewey had a great success in an arena he might not have imagined.