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Museums of Orlando
Item 11 of 16
The Cornell Fine Arts Museum is located on the campus of Rollins College in Winter Park, Florida. It is the only teaching museum in the greater Orlando Area. The museum houses a collection of over 5,000 pieces dating from antiquity to the modern day, including rare paintings, prints, ethnographic fragments, and watch keys. Admission to the rotating exhibits and special programs is free.

Exterior view of the Cornell Fine Arts Museum, image by Mark Goebel

Exterior view of the Cornell Fine Arts Museum, image by Mark Goebel
The Cornell Fine Arts Museum is located on the shore of Lake Virginia and is part of the Rollins College campus in Winter Park, Florida. The museum's mission statement is as follows:
The Cornell Fine Arts Museum at Rollins College is a teaching museum that stimulates transformative encounters with works of art and integrates art learning into daily life for campus and community.1
Opened in 1978, the museum is responsible for the Rollins College collection, which began with a number of engraved prints and oil portraits of individuals significant to the college's history. President Hamilton Holt officially began the school's art collecting endeavours in 1937 with the acquisition of several Italian Renaissance paintings donated by the Samuel H. Kress Foundation. In 1981, the American Association of Museums recognized the Cornell Fine Arts Museum, becoming one of the first college art museums in Florida to receive AAM accreditation. Alumni Barbara and Theodore Alfond provided the funds to expand the museum's holdings to incorporate the Alfond Collection of Contemporary Art.

With a collection of over 5,000 pieces, dating from antiquity to the 21st Century, the Cornell Fine Arts Museum houses seasonal rotating exhibits featuring a wide range of artworks. It maintains over 500 paintings from the 14th–21st centuries; more than 1,500 prints, drawings, and photographs dating from the 15th–21st centuries; 1,110+ ethnographic objects and fragments, some from the original Rollins College natural history museum; and over 1,200 watch keys from the 16th–late 19th centuries. Other notable works include works by Pablo Picasso, photographs by Andy Warhol, and The Dead Christ with Symbols of the Passion, by Lavinia Fontana.

Much of the collection is on display at The Alfond Inn, a hotel owned by Rollins College.5 In addition, the museum offers visitors free educational programs, such as gallery talks, lectures, panel discussions, films, hands-on art activities, special tours, and scavenger hunts.
1. "Cornell Fine Arts Museum." MuseumsUSA. Accessed August 21, 2016. http://www.museumsusa.org/museums/info/1160269. "About the Cornell Fine Arts Museum." Rollins College. Accessed August 21, 2016. http://www.rollins.edu/cornell-fine-arts-museum/about/index.html. "Cornell Fine Arts Museum." Wikipedia, the Free Encyclopedia. Accessed August 21, 2016. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cornell_Fine_Arts_Museum.