About Us
At 171 Cedar Arts Center, we enrich lives by providing accessible arts education, collaborative outreach programming, free exhibitions of regional artists, and live performances.
For more than 55 years, we have been an artistic and cultural hub for the greater Corning area, significantly impacting the vibrancy, diversity, and richness of the community and economy of the Finger Lakes region. The Arts Center cultivates an inclusive environment where people of all ages and skills share artistic passions and pursue lifelong learning. 171 is a celebrated destination for artistic experiences in music, dance, theater, culinary arts, ceramics, visual arts, and even fencing!
Our historic campus, located in the heart of Corning’s Southside Neighborhood, is comprised of two 19th century houses. The Drake House features the Houghton Gallery which hosts visual art exhibitions that are free and open to the public and the Studio Theater, a black box style performance space. Both areas routinely serve as a home for various community theater productions, concerts, recitals, dance performances, and social dances. The Bruce House is home to the Woodcock Ceramics Studio, currently the only community-based ceramic studio in the Southern Tier. It features a front-loading digital kiln, hand building room, and wheel-throwing room that includes an ADA accessible wheel. The historic campus also includes seven private music studios, an ensemble room, two large art rooms, a ballroom, dressing rooms, a conference room, small teaching kitchen, and administrative offices.
