Please join us at Cooper Union on Wednesday evening, November 1st at 6:30 pm, to celebrate the publication of “Robin Hood’s Barn: A Study of Ice Age Culture.” This book is the culmination of the life’s work of the late Professor Arthur Hill Corwin. Several alumni will be giving presentations including, Yvette Frances A’93, Bill Wolf A’84, Jim Markowich A’79 and others TBD.
Remembered fondly by many as a professor of sculpture and prehistoric symbolism in the School of Art, Corwin was also an alumnus, earning a Certificate of Art in 1954. He taught at Cooper from 1966 until his retirement in 2000. For many of his students, Corwin’s teachings transcended the walls of the classroom, offering a unique perspective on our place in the world through time. His interdisciplinary “Art in Math” class, co-developed with Professor of Mathematics Paul M. Bailyn, brought together his ideas about counting, timekeeping, astronomy, calendar systems, tarot cards, popular culture, and many other tangentially related subjects.
His classroom lectures explored a wide range of ancient oral and symbolic traditions, including myths, legends, fairy tales, superstitions and religions. “In this vast tapestry,” Corwin said in an article published in Cooper Union’s 1987 Annual Report, “many unbroken threads lead back to the glacial era. In this increasingly hostile climate, finding one’s place in time and space and the ability to measure both accurately became critical to survival—for timing hunts, storing food and avoiding winter births.” With the assistance of designer and editor Yvette Francis A’93, he had completed work on a comprehensive book on the subject at the time of his death. Now, fresh from the printer, “Robin Hood’s Barn” will be available for purchase at this event and online at at https://robinhoodsbarn.net/
Light refreshments will be served. Please RSVP to yvette@seveneastpublishing.com
Location: Benjamin Menschel Board Room 41 Cooper Square – Rm LL101 New York, NY 10003
About the Book
To survive the Ice Ages, our ancestors desperately needed to preserve and transmit essential information. Both that knowledge, and the language that carried it through the millennia, not only survived, but remains visible in plain sight in our calendars, myths, traditions, fairy tales and games. Robin Hood’s Barn is a study of that language of survival, especially the visual language of our Ice Age ancestors.
About the Author
Arthur Hill Corwin A’54,
Arthur Hill Corwin earned his Certificate of Art from the Cooper Union in 1954, and received a B.F.A. and B.Arch. from Yale in 1955 and 1958, respectively. Over the course of a long career, he worked as an artist, sculptor, licensed civil engineer, architect, and as a professor at The Cooper Union School of Art, serving as Acting Dean during multiple transition periods. His groundbreaking “Art in Math” course received the first Edwin Sharp Burdell Award for creative synthesis of Science and Art. Professor Corwin also taught Freshman 3D design and two popular advanced sculpture courses in which students were to conceive, design and build a chair or a boat. He married a Cooper alumna, the former Isabella Casaceli, Art’54, and they had been married 45 years when he died in 2017, at the age of 88.
About the Designer / Editor / Publisher
Yvette Francis A’93
Yvette Francis is a consulting design director and the principal of P. Point Design, with extensive experience in publishing, corporate branding, marketing and communications. Her work in publishing includes titles such as Wine Spectator, Cigar Aficionado, ESPN The Magazine, Inside Stuff, Men’s Fitness, and more. She has been teaching Design and Typography at CCNY since 2007.