Lost Kenyon

One would be hard pressed to find more than a few academic departments at Kenyon that remain in their original homes. But no other department has led as peripatetic an existence as art. First listed in the course catalog in 1937, the department was founded by Norris Rahming, a talented painter and photographer whose most familiar work to Gambier residents is the mural he painted in the local post office, depicting Philander Chase and Henry Curtis surveying the plateau where the College and village now stand.

For many years, Rahming and other art instructors offered two year-long art courses, one in drawing and painting and one in history and theory. Rahming and his colleagues also brought exhibitions to a variety of makeshift gallery spaces, including Philomathesian Hall and the old Alumni Library.

Some of the first studio classes were held in a small, square room in Peirce Hall's Chase Tower. Easels were arrayed about the perimeter of the room, but students' attention was most often directed not outward at the stunning views of campus but inward at the instructor, who stood at the center of the room, next to a table with a still life of bowls, jugs, and plates. Among the problems with the room, in addition to its small size, were the narrow spiral stairs leading to it and the lack of running water.

The development of art as a major dates to January 1962, when Kenyon welcomed its first full-time professor to concentrate solely in studio art, painter Joseph Slate. In the early days of his twenty-six-year tenure, Slate had an office-cum-studio space in the basement of Rosse Hall. With the help of other new instructors, ensconced in equally incommodious digs, he soon expanded the offerings to six courses and opened a new world of art appreciation and practice to the College's students.

But Slate and his colleagues were compelled to set up new office, studio, and classroom spaces on a regular basis. At one point, they were housed in five separate locations. In the 1960s and 1970s, the art department's students and faculty members occupied a long list of buildings, including a barn behind 102 North Acland Street (now Peg and Jon Tazewell's home) that was used as a sculpture studio; the old Harvey Matthews Garage on Scott Lane (now the security office); the old frame structure on the southwest corner of Brooklyn and Ward streets that we now know as Davis House; the current Student Affairs Center; the current public affairs office; and the current development office (which has also served as Kenyon's commons, post office, bookstore, and dance studio).

In 1972, four years after Bexley Hall (the seminary) moved to Rochester, New York, and left Bexley Hall (the building) to the College, the art department moved into the historic structure after a bit of remodeling. For the first time, art faculty members and students had a home that was exclusively their own. Colburn Hall, which had housed the seminary library, became a gallery and then additional studio space. In 1986, the basement shop was renovated for use by the recently arrived Claudia Esslinger and her printmaking students. In 1993, the increasingly cramped printmaking operation, along with photography and sculpture, took up residence in the Mayer Art Center, known familiarly as the Art Barn. Art history also left Bexley, for facilities in Bailey House and Olin Library.

Now, faculty members and students in both studio art and art history are dreaming of coming together again in a new facility, closer to the center of academic action at Kenyon. Although planning is still at a very preliminary stage, it's safe to say the entire campus is looking forward to the day when studio art and art history move into homes, created with their needs in mind, that they can truly call their own.

--by Tom Stamp