Art Museum Senior Profile

Leora Morinis '08
Position: Receptionist
Major: Critical social thought
Hometown: Vancouver, Canada
Favorite piece at the museum: Either Frank Stella's The Street, or the dower chest that belonged to Editha Kellogg. Kellogg was College founder Mary Lyon's great-great-grandmother--that rules!

Leora Morinis '08 initially applied to work at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum because, as she puts it, "I loved art and didn't love dish washing." Now, four years later, Morinis has greeted hundreds of visitors from her post at the reception desk, edited countless letters, and entered hundreds of objects into MIMSY, the museum cataloguing database. She's also witnessed the comings and goings of numerous exhibition items.

"The moment that really stands out is getting to pack the Diane Arbus photos," Morinis said. "She had been one of my favorite photographers when I was a teenager. It also was fascinating to learn how to properly pack photos."

Her other favorite moments have involved assisting with set up, lighting, and art placement for the Roman coin show. "I was given the task of hanging these incredibly old coins on one of the boards. It was a thrill to think about how many hands they had been passed through before arriving in mine."

In addition to her work at the museum, the critical social thought major is a member of the Student Coalition for Action. Morinis founded the "Kick the Coke" campaign, an initiative to ban Coca-Cola products on campus, and has been active in the alternative school store, the fair labor campaign, and the Iraq war campaign. She also is a DJ at WMHC; for three years, she has hosted an independent news and music show called "Fresh Media Getdown." Another creative outlet has been working on the Facebook collaborative art installation by Martha Matinez FP '09, which was displayed in Blanchard for two weeks in April. That project coincided with her independent study about subjectivity, temporality, and reality on the Internet.

After graduation, Morinis will be interning with the Vermont-based Bread and Puppet Theater. "Then I'm heading back home to Vancouver to hang out with my parents, and save money for future studies and travel--hopefully by working in a field somehow related to the arts," she said. "Eventually, I plan to go to graduate school for media/cultural studies."

Related Links:

At the Museum: An Outstanding Senior Class

By the Numbers: Class of 2008 at the Art Museum

Meet the 11 Art Museum Seniors

Mount Holyoke College Art Museum

Permanent link to this story: http://www.mtholyoke.edu/news/story/5570774

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