Celebrating Artistic Diversity

The Richard and Carole Cocks Art Museum completed in 1978 as the Miami University Art Museum, was designed by Walter Netsch of Skidmore, Owings and Merrill, Chicago, and is situated on three acres of scenic sculpture park grounds. We house five galleries of changing exhibitions and a growing permanent collection of over 17,500 artworks. The Art Museum has been accredited by the American Alliance of Museums (AAM) since 1984, and was the first University museum in Ohio to gain AAM accreditation.

Our Mission is to:

• serve as a teaching museum that engages in dialogue with and about visual culture;
• maintain and expand a strong permanent collection; 
• recognize and celebrate global artistic and cultural diversity through display, study, publication and educational programs.

Vision

The Richard and Carole Cocks Art Museum will continue to be a regional leader contributing to the educational and cultural enrichment of Miami University and Southwest Ohio communities through the preservation, presentation and public programming of diverse visual art of all forms.

Revised October 5, 2020

Values

• The Richard and Carole Cocks Art Museum is committed to:
• collaboration among students, faculty and staff, as colleagues within departments, and as artists and scholars across artistic disciplines within the division and across campus. Our goal is to learn from each other and to benefit from exchanging ideas and viewpoints;
• fostering collegiality, trust, and dialogue in an environment that encourages sharing ideas and values;
• placing a high value on nurturing creativity by encouraging an understanding of diversity in artistic expression;
• promoting social justice through our exhibitions, public programming and digital access to collections.

Revised October 5, 2020

College of Creative Arts Value Statement

As a unit of the College of Creative Arts, the Richard and Carole Cocks Art Museum is committed to its core values of:

Collaboration
We value collaboration between students, faculty and staff, as colleagues within departments, and as artists and scholars across artistic disciplines within the division and across campus, with a goal of learning from each other and benefiting from a healthy exchange of ideas and varying viewpoints. By listening to each other, we gain a shared understanding of complex ideas that allow us to rethink accepted perspectives.

Community
The College of Creative Arts seeks to foster a spirit of collegiality, trust, and dialogue by providing members of its community with an environment that encourages open sharing of ideas and values, and which fosters collaboration within and across institutional divisions and constituencies. The College seeks to structure communication and interaction that is characterized by mutual respect, sincere dialogue, and protection of the rights of individuals.

Imagination
As creators, performers, practitioners, and scholars, it is our imagination that is at the center of our ability and desire to create new art and to craft new environments and forms of expression. By placing high value on imagination, we commit ourselves to rethinking the status quo, while allowing for new ideas and solutions to emerge and to take shape.

History

The construction of the Miami University Art Museum was made possible by private contributions to Miami University's Goals for Enrichment capital campaign in the mid-1970s. A major gift for the building came as a bequest from Miami alumnus Fred C. Yager, class of 1914. Walter I. Farmer, class of 1935, and former Art Department faculty member Orpha B. Webster generously donated extensive art collections, instrumental in developing early support for the museum. Among many gifts provided to support programs, acquisitions, and exhibitions, the Norman A. Schoelles Art Museum Fund, established in 2002, provides significant support for the museum’s programs and operations. Major support from Jeffrey Horrell (‘75) and Rodney Rose provides an endowment that has supported the named directorship of the Art Museum since 2021. In 2022, a major gift from Richard Cocks, resulted in a new name for the art museum building, which is now the Richard and Carole Cocks Art Museum.

Revised December 2, 2022 to reflect name change.