An Artful Addition

Kennedy Center Completes Arts Hub

Photos by Bob Handelman Unless Otherwise Noted

With its shining glass façade, the new Kevin and Karen Kennedy Center for Theatre and the Studio Arts curves into alignment with the venerable Molly Root House, home to the Art History Department next door, and reaches toward the Ruth and Elmer Wellin Museum of Art across College Hill Road. The building, fittingly situated on land that once adjoined the Kirkland College campus, completes Hamilton’s dynamic arts neighborhood.

Hamilton broke ground for the center in July 2012, and, after watching it take shape for two years, students were eager to christen the building with their creativity even before its official dedication in October. Sara Wortman ’15 was in her senior studio coaxing wooden reeds into moon-like shapes for a sculpture that explores chaos theory. She majors in math and art. In the other wing of the building, Ryan Cassidy ’17 sat at a sewing machine in the costume shop finishing up an assignment for his lab design class. Cassidy discovered philosophy at Hamilton, and may take it on as a second major, but theatre is his primary passion. “There were so many reasons [why I picked Hamilton], but I wanted to go someplace that made a commitment to theatre. Knowing they were building this new space really satisfied that for me,” he says.

Art and theatre majors may claim the center for their own, but it is shared space, conceived as a locus of study and creativity for students of all disciplines. Professor of Music Sam Pellman describes the Kennedy Center’s two curved wings as “arms reaching out to embrace all of campus.” After a recent class he found himself chatting with a chemistry major and her friend, who had taken his music theory courses, about a musical installation he was about to finish. It involves mapping the information in the nucleobase sequence of human DNA to musical tones. The chemistry major, who’d taken biology, was intrigued, and both students grasped the concept. It was a liberal arts moment. “That’s the kind of discussion you can have here,” says Pellman, who, as faculty coordinator of the planning committee for the new center, has pushed since 2001 to bring it to life.

“[The Kennedy Center] represents a vibrant and really promising future for the arts at Hamilton,” says theatre major Wynn Van Dusen ’15. “Now when you drive up the Hill you see the Wellin Museum and right across from it you see this beautiful building, and I think it sends a really clear message that the arts at Hamilton are alive and well, and they are not going anywhere.”

Kennedy Center Features at a Glance

Theatre

Flexible theatre (175 seats) with trap floor and moveable catwalks
Lab theatre (100 seats)
Box office and coat room
Costume and scene shops
Dressing and green rooms with audio or video monitors for both theatres
Performance studio/classroom
Prop storage
Outdoor amphitheatre

Studio Arts

Ceramics and sculpture studio
Exhibition gallery
Critique room (also used as a small exhibition space)
Foundations studio arts classroom
Photography, printmaking, drawing and painting studios
Senior Project studio
Woodworking and metals shops

Digital Arts

Audio and video production rooms
Computer classrooms
Individual soundproof audio and video-editing rooms
Screening room

The Kevin and Karen Kennedy Center for Theatre and the Studio Arts

Teeming with natural light, the Kennedy Center’s flexible, open areas invite collaboration and discussion, while its smaller spaces accommodate individual study and reflection. The 83,000-square-foot building was designed by Machado and Silvetti Associates, the same architect that drew up the plans for the neighboring Wellin Museum of Art. The center is named in honor of life trustee and chairman emeritus Kevin Kennedy ’70 and his wife, Karen.

Senior art studio — Each senior art concentrator has a studio where the pristine white walls are already filling with ideas for works in progress. There are 24 senior spaces positioned throughout a huge room that captures natural light from floor-to-ceiling windows and skylights.

Students rehearse A Dream Play — Students rehearse August Strindberg’s A Dream Play in dream digs — the state-of-the-art Romano Theatre, which was designed for unfettered creativity. Combining elements of a flexible, “black box” theatre with distinctive permanent architectural features, the space has a character all its own.

Romano Theatre features include rolling catwalks for freedom in lighting design and a floor trap for easy transport of scenery and equipment from the room below.

Students in a class with Mark Cryer — In the spacious acting studio, students emote with Associate Professor of Theatre Mark Cryer. They are steps away from the Barrett Lab Theatre, the ideal space for workshops and senior projects.

Thomas Marhenke and students in the scene shop — The new scene shop has elbowroom, bountiful light and the necessary machinery to bring sets to life. Here, Thomas Marhenke, director of technical theatre, works with two students.

I’m proud of what the building says about Hamilton and its support for the arts, and more grateful than I can say to the many people who made this building possible. Driving up the Hill, and seeing the beautiful, curving façade, with its myriad reflections, it’s as if we have a new front porch where members of both the Hamilton community and the larger communities of Utica and surrounding areas are welcome to come and engage in dialogue about the large and small issues of life through the art our students and faculty create.

Craig Latrell Professor of Theatre

Assistant Professor of Art Robert Knight and students discuss photography techniques.

students hang works in the critique space — Students hang works in the critique space in the studio arts section of the Kennedy Center. The space, with its floor-to-ceiling windows on two facing sides, doubles as a small gallery.

students in the first floor of the Kennedy Center — Students are doing just what center planners had in mind — studying, relaxing, congregating and collaborating in the common space.

students in the Barrett lab theatre — Students engage in acting exercises in the Barrett Lab Theatre with some onlookers from above. The enclosed, grid-like catwalk provides complete access, as well as extra security, for students honing skills in lighting design.

theatre fall '21 "10 out of 12" — The Romano and the Barrett theatres share a box office and coat room, a spacious backstage area, costume and prop storage, a full scene shop and three basement-level dressing rooms.

students in a sculpture class — In the sculpture classroom, students are well into their projects under the guidance of Associate Professor of Art Rebecca Murtaugh. The sculpture room is flanked by the wood workshop and the hot workshop for metals and ceramics.

students and Ella Gant in the digital suite classroom — Associate Professor of Art Ella Gant and her students in the digital suite classroom, which is equipped with 16 computer workstations configured with professional software for editing photo, video and audio projects.

Having the other majors so close to me has increased a class bond. It’s incredible to know that I can walk over to another space and share an idea or ask for an opinion from someone else whose aesthetic discernment I trust. As a photographer, I could not be more impressed with the range of tools available at my fingertips. I’m already wary of how much I’ve been spoiled — finding facilities this amazing will be near impossible. Hopefully, Hamilton creates an artist-in-residence program that I could come back to.

Sean Henry-Smith ’15 art major

Student artists work on sketches in the amphitheatre area outside the center.

Students at computers in the new digital arts suite at the Kennedy Center.

“The building is a magnet, it is a conduit for energy and enthusiasm. There is a curiosity that is palpable — a sense of wonder present that we hope and strive to tap into with our students. In the past, our seniors used to be separated in two buildings and divided by a road. This fracture was not only a physical one but also a divide in community and peer engagement. Our new studio has sparked an enthusiastic, unified community, also filled with peer learning across media in all of our areas in studio art such as drawing, painting, printmaking, photography, video, ceramics and sculpture.”

Rebecca Murtaugh Associate Professor of Art