From the Director

The fall is always a splendid time to visit Mount Holyoke, and this fall in particular is an auspicious time to visit the art museum. Our special exhibition, On the Nature of Landscape, features a rich array of art works, some that, due to lack of exhibition space, have languished in storage for too long. This is your chance to see the museum's exquisite Yves Tanguy, Lurid Sky, as well as more frequently seen favorites such as George Inness' Conway Meadows and Albert Bierstadt's Hetch Hetchy Canyon among many others. And may I suggest that you plan your visit to coincide with one of the events we have planned? On the Nature of Landscape is the focus of a semester-long series of interdisciplinary programs involving departments across the campus, including an outdoor performance event, a poetry reading, and a music faculty concert. The centerpiece of the series will be three public lectures by Robert L. Herbert, Andrew W. Mellon Professor of Humanities, Emeritus. Professor Herbert will illustrate his lectures with microphotographs taken from landscape paintings by Claude Monet, Georges Seurat, and Fernand Léger, in order to examine brush strokes, color, and all aspects of their techniques. Call the museum or visit the web site (see Feature Story) for further information about these and other programs.

Also featured in the exhibition will be a landscape painting by Georgia O'Keeffe that is part of the Norma Marin Collection, a promised bequest to the art museums of three women's colleges: Mount Holyoke, Smith, and Wellesley. For the interview featured on the front page of this newsletter, Norma Marin talked with me about her introduction to American modernism and the collection that was put together over a 40-year period. The Norma Marin Collection includes a number of important as well as stunningly beautiful works that would be substantial additions to any museum's holdings of modern art. At the same time, there are marvelous interconnections among the objects; thus, it is a critical provision of the bequest that the collection should not be divided. Instead, each work will be jointly owned by the three museums, creating an exciting new kind of partnership.

In addition, Ms. Marin has established the Norma Marin Foundation for the Arts, which will be administered by a board that includes the directors of the three art museums. This foundation will manage Cape Split Place, John Marin's summer studio and the Marin family's summer retreat in Maine. It is Ms. Marin's wish that this property will continue to be a site of inspiration for artists and, particularly, that it will become a center for women working in all areas of the arts. I am extremely pleased that the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum will be a participant in this visionary endeavor.

— Marianne Doezema

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