Feature Story

The Art Museum staff has been fortunate to be assisted by Mount Holyoke students workers who enjoy learning about art. But this year, the experience for one current student and two recent graduates goes beyond "just learning." Jennifer Landis ('02), Anne Stephenson ('00), and Leela Sunquist ('98) are spending the summer working "hands on," helping to prepare the museum's permanent collection of 13,000 objects to be removed from the building in preparation for the museum's renovation and expansion. Components of the collection are going on loan to other college art museums, and the remainder will be moved to a storage facility equipped with security and climate control systems. In order for that to happen, everything must first be organized, inventoried, checked for condition, properly packed, and the appropriate paper work generated. At that point, they can be shipped.

The students have had the opportunity to work directly with the works of art, learning skills and techniques usually reserved for upper-level graduate students or professional art handlers. Leela Sundquist comes to the project with some valuable experience as an art handler, having assisted the staff of the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College when they went through the same process last year in preparation for that museum's renovation project. Anne Stephenson, a cum laude graduate, will go to the University of Chicago this fall to pursue graduate studies in art history with an emphasis in architecture. Jennifer Landis was at the Art Museum during the '99-'00 academic year as a receptionist and security guard. She is on leave for the fall semester working at the Museum full-time assisting Linda Best, the museum's Collections Manager.

We tell them all the time, but we want to let everyone know - THANKS! We couldn't do it without you!

- end of newsetter -

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