Facilities

The visual and performing arts enrich the lives of everyone in the Connecticut College community and beyond.

Our facilities - in which the arts are performed, practiced and presented - include:

Palmer Auditorium

Seating approximately 1,300 the fully-equipped Palmer Auditorium houses theater classrooms and offices for the theater and dance departments and onStage, the College's performing arts series, which brings professional music, theater and dance companies to campus for performances and workshops.

Cummings Arts Center

The soaring triangulated glass roofs of Cummings Arts Center, a specialized modern facility designed by the architects of Lincoln Center, shelter the music and art departments, artists' studios, a darkroom, Cummings Electronic and Digital Sound Studio (CEDS), John C. Evans Hall, Fortune Recital Hall, Oliva Lecture Hall, the Greer Music Library, the Cummings Art Galleries, the Wetmore Print Collection and a 116,000-item visual resources library.

The Elizabeth Gilbert Fortune '40 Recital Hall

Fully renovated in 2004, Fortune Recital Hall includes dressing rooms, a stage and seating for 72 people. The recital hall is acoustically treated with angled wooden panels to balance the reflection and absorption of sound. New ventilation and air conditioning systems reduce background noise within the hall and seating is moveable to allow for the greatest flexibility of use. The adjacent recording studio includes sound booths that allow for noise-free monitoring and recording of events taking place in the recital hall, as well as the adjacent John C. Evans Hall and the Oliva Lecture Hall.

John C. Evans Hall

Evans Hall is a state-of-the-art concert hall, and the main rehearsal and performance space in Cummings, featuring superb acoustics, a recording link to the new recording studio in Fortune Hall, and a full lighting and sound system.

Oliva Hall

Located in Cummings, one of the College's largest teaching spaces, Oliva Hall, is being transformed into a modern auditorium with multimedia capabilities, wireless access and conference-style seating. Faculty and students will be able to access a multi-regional DVD player and VCR, a document camera enabling display of a transparency, document or 3D object, a PC and a Mac computer, a film-quality projector and two multimedia projectors that can display images on side-by-side wall screens.

Greer Music Library

Located on the first floor of Cummings, Greer serves the research, information, and performance needs of the music department and the entire College community. Collections include books on music and musicians, periodicals, reference sources and indexes (print and electronic), collected works of major composers, study and performance scores of music, sound and video/laser recordings of musical performances, computer-based support for teaching and research, and special collections of recordings and sheet music.

Visual Resources Library

The Visual Resources Library in Cummings Arts Center holds slide, video, DVD, and digital image collections of primarily art and architecture. Three workstations provide scanning and imaging services to faculty and students for their classroom presentations. 

Wetmore Print Collection

Also located in Cummings Arts Center, the galleries of the Wetmore Print Collection hold Rembrandt etchings, Durer woodcuts and engravings, Hiroshige Japanese woodcuts, and USA prints by Frank Stella, John Sloan, Childe Hassam and others.

Harkness Chapel

The beauty, superb acoustics and accessibility of Harkness Chapel make it the perfect performance space for students, a cappella groups, and guest performers. It is also provides a fine setting for lectures.

Myers Dance Studio

Spacious and light, the Myers Dance Studio is located on the third floor in the Student Center at Crozier-Williams, "Cro," located in central campus.

Tansill Black Box Theater at Hillyer Hall

The Tansill Black Box Theater provides an intimate space for every conceivable type of performance.  Moveable platforms can be used to construct a stage in the center of the room, against the back wall or in a corner.  Seating for audiences of 150-200 can be adapted to any stage configuration. The first floor contains dressing rooms for performers, public restrooms and the box office.

Ammerman Center for Arts & Technology computer lab

The first of its kind in a small liberal arts setting, the Ammerman Center for Arts and Technology is a research center focusing on the uses of sophisticated technology in the fine and performing arts. The Center's state-of-the-art computer lab is located in the F. W. Olin Science Center.

Film Studies Editing Lab

Also located in Olin, the film editing lab is accessible 24 hours a day, and includes five DV non-linear editing workstations, based on Macintosh G5 computers and Final Cut Pro HD software. A key feature of the lab is that students do not share limited hard drive space. Narrative and documentary production courses are taught entirely with portable digital video equipment. Students have access time to sophisticated technology on par with that offered by any program in the country.

Shain Library and the Charles Chu Asian Art Reading Room provide space for varied exhibits and lectures and house the College's special collections.

Nearby, the Lyman Allyn Art Museum, established in 1926, is situated near the campus and overlooks the U. S. Coast Guard Academy. It is the principal comprehensive art museum serving southeastern Connecticut. The museum's collection includes Old Master drawings, American Impressionist paintings, Colonial and Federal furniture. The museum serves the College as an important resource for art, art history and museum studies students.

Last Modified: Monday, April 30, 2007 13:07