Category Archives: Archives

Our Hearts Were Young and Gay – Emily Kimbrough and Cornelia Otis Skinner

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OurHeartsWereYoungandGaySM

Program for Philadelphia premiere of Our Hearts Were Young and Gay

For the past several months, I have been privileged enough to work with the Bryn Mawr oral histories as part of my work for The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women’s Education. The oral histories are comprised of hundreds of old cassette tapes, containing interviews, speeches, and lectures with Bryn Mawr alumnae, professors, staff, and other members of the college community. Although they are not available to the public at the moment, my job includes listening to the tapes and digitizing them. The long-term goal is that they will one day be a part of a public digital archive. In the meantime, I want to share some of the fun, surprising, and enlightening facts I have learned about Bryn Mawr through my work.

Today, I listened to a speech by Emily Kimbrough, Class of 1921, which she delivered at the Senior Dinner for the Class of 1973. Her speech was riotously funny, and after I finished listening, I decided to look up her alumna file. It turns out that Emily Kimbrough was a very accomplished writer, known for her humorous memoirs and short stories. As if that weren’t fun enough, her breakthrough novel, entitled Our Hearts Were Young and Gay, was co-written with Cornelia Otis Skinner, Class of 1922, a famous writer and actress. The book, published in 1942, is an account of their wild and hilarious trip to Europe when they were fresh out of Bryn Mawr. The book was made into a movie of the same name in 1944, a play dramatized by Jean Kerr, and a short-lived TV show as well. Throughout this process, the book and movie stayed close to their Bryn Mawr roots, with Paramount holding a special Philadelphia premiere of the movie for the Bryn Mawr College Special Scholarship Fund. Special Collections has the program for this premiere, which provides a great glimpse of Bryn Mawr in the 1940’s, as well as the strong associations between Our Hearts Were Young and Gay and the college.

Having discovered this treasure trove of forgotten Bryn Mawr hilarity, I immediately chased down the book and movie for myself. The movie appears to be available in full on Youtube. The book was in Canaday, and I can’t wait to start reading it. Even glancing through it, I can see that it is full of the kinds of Bryn Mawr stories that every Mawrter should adopt into their personal collection of college trivia. I hope that this post can revive the popularity of the book and movie at Bryn Mawr, and perhaps Our Hearts Were Young and Gay will become the new craze to sweep the campus. Such works are invaluable to every Mawrter, since they provide fun glimpses into the lives of our predecessors outside of the classroom. While I get to hear such stories frequently through the oral histories, other students can pick up Our Hearts Were Young and Gay and learn a bit more of the Mawrters of days past, and the mischief they got up to over 90 years ago.

Zoe Fox, 2014

Bryn Mawr Special Collections on Wikipedia…

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edit-a-thon_EandP1-300x224

Staff members participating in the edit-a-thon, January 10th 2013

On Friday, January 10th 2014, Special Collections staff at Bryn Mawr College held an in-house Wikipedia edit-a-thon.  Our goal for this event was to prepare for future edit-a-thons that will be open to other members of the Bryn Mawr Community and to increase the visibility of Special Collections holdings on Wikipedia.  Evan McGonagill has written about this in the Blog of The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women’s Education at Bryn Mawr College which can be found at: http://greenfield.blogs.brynmawr.edu/2014/01/15/writing-the-collective-record-on-delving-into-wikipedia/

To view a few of the types of some of the outcomes of this event see the links below:

New records created:                http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bryn_Mawr_Painter

Links to online finding aids added to records:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dorothy_Burr_Thompson

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lucy_Shoe_Meritt

Welcome to Bryn Mawr…in 1951!

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Judith Kate Haywood Jacoby (photograph) Judith Kate Haywood at a party at Bryn Mawr.

Gift of Karl Haywood Jacoby.

At the end of the summer of 1951, Judith Kate Haywood (later Jacoby) (1934-1997) was making preparations to attend Bryn Mawr College for the first time. She had just returned from a tour of Europe, a trip that was a high school graduation gift from her parents, when she received a welcome letter in the mail from a returning Bryn Mawr student. The author of the letter was a rising junior, Barbara Pennypacker (Class of 1953). The tradition of an upperclasswoman sending a letter to a freshman still exists at Bryn Mawr today, but with a couple of modifications. Freshmen today receive welcoming correspondence from sophomores designated “Customs People,” and this correspondence comes by way of email rather than the post.          

A couple pieces of advice Judith received in the letter in 1951, however, may be still relevant for students today. For example, Barbara wrote, “The most important advice I have is to arrive early. The halls open at 8 in the morning and it is wise to arrive then, and I think you’ll understand why.” And, “Try not to make a lot of outside engagements during the first few days as things will be very confusing and you will be very busy.”

But, much of her advice would not help members of the soon-to-arrive Class of 2017: they will not be expected to take a voice test, undergo a physical, or “sign a contagion card” (a card on which each student listed the contagious diseases she had had. Barbara also gave advice to Judith about what she should bring with her. She told her that trunks often got lost and that packing a suitcase with clothing was a good idea

“As for clothes—bring a suitcase with shirts, shorts, sweater, blue jeans, a dress or two and something you can wear to a combination square dance and ballroom dance….College wear is just what you’ve been wearing at school. Don’t believe all that Junior Bazaar or the College Shop at Lord and Taylor’s tells you. We are individuals trying to be comfortable and neat, and we don’t spend hours at our wardrobe. Anything respectable will do nicely…If you find that you are naked or have forgotten something, there are excellent stores nearby…”

(Letter dated August 20, 1951)

Students today seldom fret about lost trunks or bringing a “combination square dance and ballroom” dress, but they can still take the advice that designer fashion and accessories are not necessary for sitting in class. More than sixty years later, it remains true that there is great shopping nearby in case someone should find herself naked!

In her first semester at college, Judith was required to pass a Self-Governance exam. Students got an up-to-date booklet of the constitution and resolutions of the Bryn Mawr Students Association. At exam time, the college provided one of those familiar (and dreaded)  blue books in which students answered, in essay form, questions about specific rules. Here are two pages from Judith’s 1951-1952 Self-Government booklet.

Rules Book 3

Unlike students in the Class of 1955, students in the Class of 2017 will not have to take an exam about rules. They do have rules, but infinitely less restrictive ones. Today, Bryn Mawrters can leave the college campus without getting permission from “Permission Givers,” stay in hotels, wear shorts to class, wear trousers “on main roads or in the village,” and sunbathe pretty much anywhere they please (like on Merion Green with speakers blaring before finals week in Spring). Smoking in Taylor Hall in the “Water-Cooler corridor” or in any other building, for that matter, is no longer allowed.

Regardless of whether it is the 1890s, the 1950s, or the late 2010s, all freshmen are bound to experience the excitement and anxieties that come with starting a new chapter of life.

Jennifer Hoit Dawson
Ph.D. Candidate in Greek, Latin & Classical Studies

The Judith Kate Haywood Jacoby papers offer unique insight into what it was like to be a student at Bryn Mawr in the 1950s. The papers date from Judith’s college years and include correspondence from her parents, academic course work, notes on extracurricular activities, appointment books, a diary, some photographs, and ephemera.

Marianne Moore: College Education to Professional Career

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MMoore Senior PictureBryn Mawr College Special Collections is in the final stages of reorganizing and cataloging the papers of one of the college’s most cherished alumnae, the poet Marianne Craig Moore (Class of 1909). The Marianne Craig Moore Papers consist of 23 boxes of correspondence, photographs, audio recordings, manuscripts, news clippings, and ephemera. We can also boast that we have in our collection one of Marianne Moore’s cloaks, her briefcase with the monogram “M.M.,” and one of her iconic tricorner hats! These materials were given to Bryn Mawr by many donors including Hildegarde and J. Sibley Watson, Jr., Sallie Moore and Marianne Craig “Bee” Moore, Mary Woodworth, Anna Marcet Haldeman-Julius, K. Laurence Stapleton, and many Bryn Mawr alumnae. The collection reveals unique aspects of Marianne Moore’s education at Bryn Mawr.

At the time of her death in 1972, Marianne Moore was well-known as an innovative and witty modernist poet. She won multiple awards for her books of poetry including the Pulitzer Prize, the Bollingen Prize, The National Book Award, The National Medal for Literature, France’s Croix de Chevalier, and sixteen honorary degrees. Until the time of her final illness in 1969, Moore participated in numerous speaking engagements and graciously gave critical advice to young and upcoming poets. Success had not come quickly or easily for Marianne, however. She faced many challenges in acquiring a college education, being professionally published, and finding a professional position as an editor and writer.

Marianne Moore was born to Mary Warner Moore and John Milton Moore in Kirkwood, Missouri in 1887. Because John Moore suffered a nervous breakdown and was institutionalized before she was born, the poetess never knew her father. Marianne, with her mother and her older brother, moved to Pennsylvania in 1894. While living in Carlisle, PA, Mary Moore worked as an English teacher. A single mother, Mary would continue to hold this job so that both of her children could attend college—John at Yale and Marianne at Bryn Mawr. Details of the financial burden of putting two children through college emerge in the letters Mary wrote to Bryn Mawr. In a letter dated May 2, 1904, Mary Warner Moore wrote: “In replying for my daughter to your announcement that an increase of fifty dollars in the yearly tuition is to be made, I should say that her application still remains good. I am sorry however, that an increase in tuition is necessary. I have been teaching for four years in order to make college education possible for my two children—a son and a daughter, and of course under the new arrangement, the weight is greater…”

And on January 18, 1906, she wrote, “That [Marianne’s] brother is in College, and she likewise, and that I am teaching in order to keep them there, may make apparent the reason of a somewhat frugal ordering of her affairs on Marianne’s part while she is in College, and also of her application for scholarships. The circumstances of our lives have been unusual…”

Their “unusual” family circumstances also made other aspects of attending college difficult for Marianne. In a letter dated September 4, 1905, Mary wrote to Bryn Mawr to ask whether there was any way Marianne could take her English examination on a Monday afternoon rather than in the morning so that Marianne’s brother could escort her to Bryn Mawr. This way, Mary would not have to take off work. Marianne’s mother ended the letter,

“[Marianne] has never traveled alone, however, and I am not willing to have her make the journey, and its several changes, alone.”

Unfortunately, her request was not granted. In the next letter dated September 11, 1905, Marianne’s mother thanked Bryn Mawr for refusing her request politely. Seeming thoroughly embarrassed, she replied, “That I, a teacher, should be guilty of proposing a disorderly act, seems most reprehensible.”

In Fall of 1905 Marianne arrived at Bryn Mawr. She wanted to be an English major; her love of reading and writing had started at a young age. She was thwarted, however, by her English professors who said that she was obscure and unclear in her writing and that she often disregarded rules of grammar and language. Ironically, these characteristics would be hallmarks of her famous, modernist poetry. Marianne continued to write while at Bryn Mawr, publishing short stories and poems in Tipyn O’Bob and The Lantern. She also wanted to major in biology but was apparently discouraged by her mother who thought that being a biologist was no profession for a lady. Nevertheless, flora, fauna, and the sea were frequent subjects of her poetry.

Marianne graduated from Bryn Mawr with a B.A. in history, economics, and politics in 1909. It took six years after graduating Bryn Mawr before she was published professionally. After moving to New York with her mother, she befriended J. Sibley Watson, Jr. and Scofield Thayer, owners of The Dial, a popular magazine which served as an outlet for modernist thought, art, and literature. Watson and Thayer were so impressed with Marianne Moore that they made her acting editor of their magazine in 1925 and editor-in-chief in 1926. She was editor until 1929 when The Dial ceased publication.

Jennifer Hoit Dawson
Ph.D. Candidate in Greek, Latin & Classical Studies

The Deanery

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Deanery_Aerial_View

For most students at Bryn Mawr, “the Deanery” Deanery__Christmas_Cardis an unfamiliar name. Half a century ago, however, this would certainly not have been the case. The Deanery was the home of the first Dean and second President of the college, M. Carey Thomas. When she moved there in 1885 at the age of 29, it was a modest Victorian cottage of five rooms, situated downhill from what was then the central campus building, Taylor Hall. Thomas lived in the Deanery for almost five decades, sharing it first with her friend Mamie Gwinn and later with her friend and partner, Mary Garrett. In 1896 and again in 1908, the building was renovated and expanded, ultimately becoming a sprawling 46-room mansion filled with the art and furniture that Thomas and Garret collected on their travels. While Thomas lived there, she entertained such famous figures as Henry James, Bertrand Russell, and Anna Howard Shaw, but she also held Senior receptions and other events for Bryn Mawr students.

Deanery_garden_fountain_Bryn_Mawr_CollegeWhen Thomas moved away from the campus in 1933, she left the Deanery and most of its contents to the Alumnae Association for use as the college’s Alumnae Center and Inn. It stood for another 35 years as a living memorial to the President, until it was demolished in 1968 for the construction of Canaday Library, which stands on the site today. In 1974, the Deanery’s garden was transformed into the Blanca Noel Taft Memorial Garden, which can still be visited behind Canaday.

Over time, the memory of the building, which had as much personality as the women who lived there, has faded from Bryn Mawr’s collective consciousness. I had never heard of the Deanery before I was assigned to work on this project, despite the fact that an exhibition called “The Deanery Remembered” was held in the Canaday foyer in 1985, as part of the college’s Centennial Celebration.

As work on the project has progressed, archival material from that exhibition as well as hundreds of works of decorative art have resurfaced. One of the most exciting aspects of 2012.4.6.u_BMC_f_2the project is the search for objects around campus that were used in the Deanery; once found, many are brought to Special Collections for cataloguing and conservation. The “treasure hunt” has brought to light beautiful eighteenth- and nineteenth-century suites of furniture, charming bronze statues and figurines, and fragments of the brass filigree stencils and painted burlap panels that decorated the Deanery’s ceilings, among many other wonderful finds. As we dust off the china and bring the chairs out of their forgotten hiding places, we are able to slowly reconstruct what was clearly a unique and amazing place.

We have made incredible progress this summer in reassembling the Deanery Collection, but much work remains to be done. I am looking forward to the end result of our endeavors: the exhibition that will bring the Deanery back to life and remind us again of the significance of Bryn Mawr’s heritage collections. Check out the Deanery portfolio on Triarte!

by Rachel Starry, Graduate Student in Classical and Near Eastern Archaeology

Theory and Practice: Students in Spring course produce exhibition and education program Part 4

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making our worldThe Spring 2013 course “The Curator in the Museum” at Bryn Mawr College mixes theory into practice in the new exhibition “Making our World” located on the second floor of Canaday Library. Through readings and guest lectures related to the broader course theme of analyzing the “institution” of the museum and all its related parts, we integrated these models into our own project exhibition and corresponding education program for local high school students.

The following updates — written and edited by students as part of the team-based approach to the entire project — are reports on our progress along the way. Please let us know your thoughts.

Oral Histories: Gathering Information and Making Connections

Student bloggers: Xingzhe He, Jennifer Rabowsky, Alison Whitney

Jennifer:

Courtney Pinkerton oral history interview with (clockwise from lower left) Jennifer Rabowsky, Xingzhe He, Pinkerton, Brian Wallace, and Alison Whitney.

Courtney Pinkerton oral history interview with (clockwise from lower left) Jennifer Rabowsky, Xingzhe He, Pinkerton, Brian Wallace, and Alison Whitney.


Back in late February, while sitting across from our first interviewee, Courtney Pinkerton, our nerves threatened to botch our first oral history.  Just a week before, we had sat down with Professor Brian Wallace and Educator Shari Osborn, where quite simply put, we were told that we were going to be conducting oral history interviews of Bryn Mawr alumna for the “Making Our World” exhibition.  The process seemed intimidating—there is a widely known, appropriate way to go about conducting these interviews—and all three of us had never done one before.  Luckily for us, Courtney was excited to participate, had a wonderful sense of humor, and was incredibly patient.  When we had to spend five minutes to figure out why our recorders weren’t working, this last quality turned out to be a godsend.  And, by the time we started the interview the ice had been broken and it was smooth sailing.

Courtney’s answers to our questions were engaging and, most importantly, were full of emotion.  She told us a humorous anecdote of a prank she performed sophomore year—she and two friends replace the flags from the Thomas Hall turrets with Texas flags—followed by more serious anecdotes about how Bryn Mawr helped her view her fiscal independence as a positive.  Courtney allowed us to see the influence that Bryn Mawr College had on her, and by the end of the interview we had captured a snapshot of Courtney’s life.   When we walked away, we were all excited that we had conducted a successful oral history interview.  But more so than this, we were excited that we had created something that would be accessioned into Bryn Mawr’s permanent collection, and that would be used as an integral part of “Making Our World”.

Xingzhe:

Xingzhe He interviewing Kimberly Blessing '97.

Xingzhe He interviewing Kimberly Blessing ’97.

I interviewed two alumnae, Margery Lee, who graduated in 1951 with a BA in History, and Kimberly Blessing, who graduated in 1997 with a degree in Computer Science. Kimberly was my first interviewee, and the interview was conducted over the phone. While I was a little nervous for my first oral history project, I became more relaxed as the conversation unfolded. Kimberly was an engaging and inspiring character, and it was truly a pleasure to share with her some of the best memories she has had at Bryn Mawr, the moments of accomplishment, difficulties and confusion she had encountered as a young college student.

Later I interviewed Ms. Lee in person. Almost 60 years have passed since she left Bryn Mawr, yet she is still deeply attached to the college and the place. She recalled the classes she loved while being an undergraduate, her role as the coordinator of her Garden Party, and her involvement with the alumnae association after graduation.

Alison:

I was the second person in our group to interview an alumna on our own, and I have to say, it was nerve-wracking. But I could not have interviewed a more charming, interesting woman than Jackie Koldin Levine, graduate of Bryn Mawr’s class of 1946. Jackie received her BA from Bryn Mawr in psychology, with a minor in political science, and has led a fulfilled life as a self-described “full time volunteer”.  Jackie has been very involved in national organizations for the National Jewish Community, and also with the Civil Rights Movement.

Jennifer Rabowsky and Alison Whitney during the Jackie Levine interview.

Jennifer Rabowsky and Alison Whitney during the Jackie Levine interview.

In our interview Jackie spoke proudly of her experiences marching with Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. from Selma to Montgomery, and attending the march on Washington for Jobs and Freedom. She shared that she gained her strength at Bryn Mawr, a place where she learned to not be afraid and to express herself and her beliefs — even when others disagree. My favorite moment during our interview had to have been the discovery that Jackie lived in Rockefeller dorm, where I have lived for three years. I realized that the dorm room I am living in now has been occupied by incredible women like Jackie Levine (or even Jackie herself!) who have gone on to graduate from Bryn Mawr, achieve great things, and live fulfilled lives. I am proud to know that I am a part of that legacy.

Theory and Practice: Students in Spring course produce exhibition and education program Part 3

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making our worldThe Spring 2013 course “The Curator in the Museum” at Bryn Mawr College mixes theory into practice in the new exhibition “Making our World” located on the second floor of Canaday Library. Through readings and guest lectures related to the broader course theme of analyzing the “institution” of the museum and all its related parts, we integrated these models into our own project exhibition and corresponding education program for local high school students.

The following updates — written and edited by students as part of the team-based approach to the entire project — are reports on our progress along the way. Please let us know your thoughts.

Communicating Personality and Displaying a Life

Student blogger: Claudia Keep

Pinkerton (left) and Levine sections of Making Our World. Photograph by Alison Whitney

Pinkerton (left) and Levine sections of Making Our World. Photograph by Alison Whitney

One of the challenges of creating an exhibit around living individuals is how to portray their personality and the intangible qualities and values that they hold. How do you show something that is not an object? We were working with various objects that hopefully, when displayed together, would tell /create an accurate description of the individual. But how does one pick and choose the object or series of objects that would best represent the various qualities that made up these individuals?

One of the subjects of our “Making Our World” show, recent Bryn Mawr graduate Courtney Pinkerton had many interests and fascinating stories, but they did not all lend themselves to a visual display. Other subjects of our show were easier to portray visually, particularly as interviewees Jackie Levine and Margery Lee are both art collectors, and had donated numerous books and works of art to Bryn Mawr’s Special Collections.

Only having graduated last year, most of Courtney’s life experiences and interests have been defined by her time in high school, and most especially by her time at Bryn Mawr. Courtney’s time at Bryn Mawr was shaped greatly by her independence, and her work ethic. But how do you show independence, hard work, and commitment inside of a glass case?

To design and fill the portion of the display case reserved for Courtney, we had several objects to work with.  We had a portrait of Courtney Pinkerton and her mother taken last year at commencement, by artist Gilbert Plantinga; the pair of pink sequined cow girl boots that Courtney is wearing in the photograph; the flag of Courtney’s native state, Texas; a copy of the 3.5 resolution Courtney drafted and proposed at plenary; a copy of Courtney’s senior thesis on the intersection of popular culture and race relations; and finally, the crime blotter entry that describes the prank Courtney and her friends played where they switched the flags on Thomas Great Hall with Texas state flags.

Gilbert Plantinga Mary & Courtney Pinkerton, 2012 Digital print Seymour Adelman Fund Purchase Bryn Mawr College 2013.6.32

Gilbert Plantinga
Mary & Courtney Pinkerton, 2012
Digital print
Seymour Adelman Fund Purchase
Bryn Mawr College
2013.6.32

For the final display, we decided to include the portrait of Courtney, her pink boots, the Texas flag, the crime blotter, and the plenary resolution.  These objects seemed to both create an image of Courtney’s personality as well reflect on her time at Bryn Mawr, combining her personal experiences, like her flag prank, and experiences that all Bryn Mawr students could relate to, like a plenary resolution and the Bi-Co news crime blotter. The flag of Texas and her pink cowgirl boots were visual nods to her home state as well as too her strong sense of individuality (not many Bryn Mawr students regularly wear such striking boots). We decided not to include her thesis for, as stimulating as it might be to read, it would not look very compelling sitting in a glass case where no one could read it. We also felt that as almost all students will write a thesis during their time at Bryn Mawr, it did not communicate anything specific enough about Courtney or her time at Bryn Mawr.

We hoped to achieve a balance between objects and text to create a display that was both informative and visually arresting.

.

Theory and Practice: Students in Spring course produce exhibition and education program part 2

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making our worldThe Spring 2013 course “The Curator in the Museum” at Bryn Mawr College mixes theory into practice in the new exhibition “Making our World” located on the second floor of Canaday Library. Through readings and guest lectures related to the broader course theme of analyzing the “institution” of the museum and all its related parts, we integrated these models into our own project exhibition and corresponding education program for local high school students.

The following updates — written and edited by students as part of the team-based approach to the entire project — are reports on our progress along the way. Please let us know your thoughts.

Decision-making and “Making Our World”

Student blogger: Christine Villanueva

Curator Jennifer Redmond, Director, The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women's Education, introduces students to the Taking Her Place exhibition on the first day of the semester.

Curator Jennifer Redmond, Director, The Albert M. Greenfield Digital Center for the History of Women’s Education, introduces students to the Taking Her Place exhibition on the first day of the semester.

Making Our World is a satellite exhibit centered on main exhibition Taking Her Place located in Canaday’s Rare Book Room. As a departure from Taking Her Place (an exhibition dedicated in exploring the early history of women’s higher education and Bryn Mawr College’s parallel role in providing women of the 19th/early-20th centuries public access beyond the domestic sphere), Making Our World focuses on four contemporary Bryn Mawr alumnae. Since the post-war period, Bryn Mawr has remained an environment that fosters the same intense intellectual curiosity that it did for women in the 19th/early 20th centuries, giving them public access to contribute more actively to the world around them.

The collected cultural ephemera that included (among other things) a computer, yearbooks, magazines, pamphlets, photographs, and artworks were donated by each of the four Bryn Mawr alumnae profiled. Each was generous with her time and participation with the project, but discretion as a value revealed itself of tantamount importance as research in developing the story and thematic elements of Making Our World. The alumnae profiled in Making Our World –Courtney Pinkerton, Kimberly Blessing, Margery Lee, and Jacqueline Levine –not only served as subjects in order to explore how experiences at Bryn Mawr shaped their lives, but also as women to celebrate. In that light, the exhibitions group sought to find objects that best represented and respected the women and their stories, and also how each have impacted Bryn Mawr’s community.

In the case of Margery Lee, Class of 1951, instead of focusing on her experiences as an undergraduate at Bryn Mawr College and her professional career, Lee insisted on focusing on the collection of artworks she donated to Bryn Mawr College and her numerous experiences in the art world. It was clear that her love of art she shared with her husband had been a vital and defining experience in her life. We respected her insistence on this significant aspect of her life by having her collection of artworks take center stage as indicative of Lee’s experiences and accomplishments from Bryn Mawr. She has donated over a dozen artworks to the college, and selecting which works to highlight from the impressive pool of candidates proved a fun task for the exhibitions group as executive “curators” of Making Our World. The objects group pulled several pieces for us to consider. These included a large-scale photograph by local and contemporary artist David Graham, a photograph by prolific and controversial artist Andres Serrano, a screen print by Warren Rohrer, and lithographs by Jim Dine and Jody Pinto.

Working out the installation details

Working out the installation details

Initially unsatisfied by the pool of works pulled by the objects group, we used triarte.brynmawr.edu, the arts and artifacts database of Bryn Mawr and Haverford colleges to see what other works could be considered for the exhibit. We rejected the Jim Dine lithograph because we felt its heart motif too sentimental, obvious and ‘on the nose’ for the exhibit’s theme and title. We loved that Bryn Mawr owned an Andrew Serrano photograph of a close-up girl’s pierced ear and earring titled “Child Abuse II”, but felt the content of the photograph incongruous with our exhibit, and felt that Serrano’s piece could be better served in a future exhibit. Its inclusion in Making Our World felt forced to us given Serrano’s critical intent for the work. Rohrer’s screen print “Barks and Marks”, David Graham’s photograph of a William Penn impersonator “Bud Burkhart as William Penn, Three Arches, Levittown, PA”, and Jody Pinto’s landscape lithograph “Fingerspan for Climbers Rock Fairmount Park” were all seriously considered to display for the exhibit.

To be frank, however, we wondered if there were other works in Lee’s collection that held the same “big-name” artist recognition as Andres Serrano. Though our anticipated audience was not geared towards a distinctly informed art audience familiar with an artist like Serrano, we felt that, in part, by focusing on Margery Lee’s donated works as indicative of Bryn Mawr’s first-rate Art and Artifacts Collections, we wanted to display works that could carry broad-based appeal and familiarity, and excite an audience approaching not only Making Our World, but Bryn Mawr College itself. Although Rohrer, Graham, and Pinto’s works are of great quality and content (representative of Lee’s strong local connection to the Pennsylvania art scene), we were confident that Lee’s collection was deep enough to pull other works representative of Bryn Mawr’s world class art collection.

As such, we were excited to discover Lee had also donated George Segal and James Rosenquist serigraphs and an Ansel Adams photograph to the college. We wanted to include the Ansel Adams photograph “Dead Tree, Sunset Crater National Monument, Arizona” but were informed that it had already been exhibited in a prior show, Double Take, a year ago. Because of the photographic medium and the work’s age, conservation rules dictate that photographs only be displayed (under strict lighting guidelines) every few years. In order to preserve Adams’s work for future Mawrtyrs, we were unable to display it for this exhibit. However, the James Rosenquist serigraph “For the Young Artist”, an imitation of a color perception test called an Ishihara Color Test that spells out “ICU2RA*” (roughly “I see you too are a star), proved to be the fulcrum around which we based Margery Lee’s display. It was colorful and dynamic, it was by renowned Pop artist James Rosenquist (whose works are in the collection of MoMA and the Met, among others), and most importantly, its thematic content of mentorship between young and old generations proved a home run. As the only abstract, non-figurative artwork displayed, we chose the Rosenquist piece over Rohrer’s “Barks and Marks”.

For the Young Artist, James Rosenquist Serigraph on wove paper 2007.12.3

For the Young Artist, James Rosenquist
Serigraph on wove paper
2007.12.3

However, its size proved to be slightly detrimental and highly difficult within our display case. But, the exhibitions group pushed for its inclusion as it also worked well loosely juxtaposed next to alumna Kimberly Blessing’s technology oriented objects. We were happy with the other artworks the objects grouped pulled –Marlene Dumas’s “Supermodel”, John Kindness’s “China Cabinet Fly”, and David Graham’s William Penn photo –but their respective sizes proved too large for the space, and we found ourselves needing to cut one piece. Dumas’s “Supermodel” was a shoe-in; it is the only work by a female artist, and, we felt, played well against other featured alumna and art collector Jacqueline Levine’s displayed artworks of figuratively focused, and politically/racially charged (in different degrees) works. Ultimately, we chose etching “China Cabinet Fly” against Graham’s photograph because it paired better between the Rosenquist and Dumas prints.


Upon reflection, perhaps it would have proved better to mix up the displayed artworks, exhibiting the large-scale William Penn photograph instead in order to challenge audience expectations. But, as exhibition designers, we stand strongly behind our decisions to display other works against others, as all decisions were reached thoughtfully and collaboratively. We feel that the final three artworks exhibited for Margery Lee cohesively celebrate both her and the college’s art collection, and more broadly, the community oriented engaged learning of Making Our World.

Theory and practice: Students in Spring course produce exhibition and education program Part 1

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making our worldThe Spring 2013 course “The Curator in the Museum” at Bryn Mawr College mixes theory into practice in the new exhibition “Making our World” located on the second floor of Canaday Library. Through readings and guest lectures related to the broader course theme of analyzing the “institution” of the museum and all its related parts, we integrated these models into our own project exhibition and corresponding education program for local high school students.

The following updates — written and edited by students as part of the team-based approach to the entire project — are reports on our progress along the way. Please let us know your thoughts.

Guest Lecturer Dr. Bruce Altshuler

Student blogger: Adriana Grossman

Bruce Altshuler, New York University

Bruce Altshuler, New York University

On February 18th, the Curator in the Museum class was lucky to have Dr. Bruce Altshuler as a guest lecturer. Dr. Altshuler is currently the Director of the Program in Museum Studies at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences at New York University, and part of the International Association of Art Critics (AICA/USA), the American Association of Museums, and the College Art Association. It was particularly exciting to be able to speak to someone currently active in the field of museum studies, given the potential beginnings of a museum studies department at Bryn Mawr College. He is also the author of Salon to Biennial—Exhibitions That Made Art History, Volume I: 1863–1959, and is currently at work on the second volume.

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Though we were all initially a little intimidated by Dr. Altshuler’s background, a congenial tone was set from the very beginning of the class period when he asked us all to introduce ourselves and explain why we were interested in the field of museum studies. Every answer varied, proving just how many other concentrations could lend themselves to the field and how broad the field itself is. Dr. Altshuler himself studied philosophy before entering the art world. He spoke to us about his beginnings in the commercial art world, working as a dealer with Zabriski Gallery. Zabriski Gallery specializes in Dada, Surrealism, American Modernism, photography, and contemporary art, the last of which is Dr. Altshuler’s primary area of interest, along with the history of exhibitions. He then told us a little about his experiences as director of the Noguchi Museum from 1992 to 1998.

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The last topic that we discussed was museum studies. As Dr. Altshuler made clear to us in telling us about his varied career, museum studies is a field that can be applied in a broad range of ways, the direction of which ultimately depends upon personal preference and the research that one chooses to undertake. The Museum Studies program has been offered at New York University for over three decades, and is still relatively young as a field of study. Dr. Altshuler suggested that this was perhaps because the field is hard to define given how much it has to encompass. Indeed, museum studies requires academic work to engage museum theory and practice, including the history of the institutions as well as the artworks within them, as well as preparation to be involved with more hands-on roles in the workings of a museum. (We recently got to do a little hands-on work ourselves, and will continue to be doing so as our class exhibition “Making Our World” progresses.) In other words, it is everything to do with running a museum.

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As was made clear in our discussions with Dr. Altshuler, museum studies is a field that will only continue to grow. Since its inception, it is a field that has come to many different institutions and is still burgeoning, as is evidenced by the suggestion of such a field of study at Bryn Mawr College.

 

 

 

Joseph W. Taylor’s Books – From the Library of our Founder

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Four of Dr. Taylor's booksBryn Mawr’s Special Collections  holds a number of books previously owned by Dr. Joseph W. Taylor, the founder of the college. In a recent reexamination of some of these—in my case, a first viewing—we were excited to find a group of four books which illuminate the background of Dr. Taylor’s personal education and his beliefs on the place of women in American society. Taylor carefully signed and dated each of his books, which allows us to attach them to known periods of his life. Three are dated to the mid-1820s, when he was in his early teenage years.[i] His age, coupled with the subjects of these books (Euclidean geometry and Latin commentaries on the works of Julius Caesar and Ovid), suggest that these may have been his own schoolbooks. If this is so, their content shows his early education to have been erudite and classically-focused.

The fourth book, Woman, Her Station Providentially Appointed…, by Margaret Coxe, discusses the role of women in American society in general and, more pointedly, argues for women’s intellectual aptitude and the importance of women as teachers.[ii] It came into Dr. Taylor’s collection while living in the Philadelphia area in 1853, one year before he became a member of the Board of Haverford College. It is attractive to imagine this book as one of many which spurred Dr. Taylor’s dream of a women’s college whose academic standards equaled those of institutions like those where he had.

Together, these books serve as a reflection of a man who was well-educated from a young age; a man who valued his school books, and by extension education, enough to keep them throughout his life; and a man who as a rising professional took an interest in questions of the social and intellectual life of American women. Luckily they stayed together in order to support this portrait. What kept them together and how did they come into our collections?

After Taylor’s death in 1880, the books stayed in the Taylor family, passing to Joseph’s sister, thence to her children, and finally to Margaret Taylor MacIntosh. Margaret was a Bryn Mawr alumna (Class of ’21) and took a keen interest in her great uncle—she wrote and published his biography in 1932.[iii] It is no wonder that she realized that these heirlooms would be treasured by Bryn Mawr as they had been by Taylor’s family. She donated many of the volumes to the library in 1955, but some, including that on women’s place in society—in a pleasantly decorative, but subdued, early-Victorian binding—only came to us in 1965. Although the books each have their own distinct origin and history, their individual stories very quickly coincide; they remained together in in the Thomas family libraries until they came into our possession. Here in Special Collections we can preserve not only their individual content, but also their constellation, offering us tantalizing insights into the background and character of the man who collected them—and who founded Bryn Mawr College.

[i] Aulus Hirtius, Jean Godouin, and Thomas Clark, ed. 1824. C. Julii Cæsaris, quæ extant. Philadelphia: J. Grigg. (http://tripod.brynmawr.edu/find/Record/.b3895809); Playfair, John ed.. 1819. Elements of geometry: containing the first six books of Euclid : with a supplement on the quadrature of the circle, and the geometry of solids : to which are added elements of plane and spherical trigonometry. New York: Collins and Hanny. (http://tripod.brynmawr.edu/find/Record/.b3895808); Jan Minell, and Nathan Bailey ed. 1815. Ovid’s Metamorphoses, in fifteen books. Dublin: printed by Brett Smith. (http://tripod.brynmawr.edu/find/Record/.b3895805)

[ii] Coxe, Margaret. 1848. Woman, her station providentially appointed: and the duties assigned to a woman in her station. Columbus [Ohio]: Isaac N. Whiting. (http://tripod.brynmawr.edu/find/Record/.b3895810)

[iii] MacIntosh, Margaret Taylor. 1936. Joseph Wright Taylor, founder of Bryn Mawr College. Haverford, Pa: C.S. Taylor. (http://tripod.brynmawr.edu/find/Record/.b1450995)