Newsletter - Fall 1999
Feature Story

New on the Staff

We are delighted to announce that Linda Delone Best joined the staff in July as Collections Manager. Linda has an impressive professional background, having served as Associate Registrar at the National Portrait Gallery, Smithsonian Institution, and at the Wadsworth Athenaeum (Hartford, CT). She was also Registrar at Historic Deerfield. She comes to Mount Holyoke from the Mead Art Museum, Amherst College, where she has been the Registrar since March, 1990. A native of South Hadley, she is a graduate of the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, where she majored in art history and Italian. Linda also studied at the Universita per Straieri, Perugia, Italy. An avid collector of Wizard of Oz memorabilia, Linda is also actively involved in community theatre. Welcome Linda!

Hair it is!

Not everyone is lucky enough to be born a Roman empress, but even we modern day commoners can have a chance to feel like one, if only for a day. More accurately, anyone can feel what it's like to have the hairstyle of a trend-setting empress who lived in the second century.

The latest look in New York this season may be an urban combo of vintage fashions and high tech, but earlier this summer at the ritzy New York hair salon Bumble and Bumble, a stylist looked even farther back for inspiration -- all the way back to ancient times. In June, Bumble and Bumble's renowned Leonardo Mannetti was commissioned to recreate the ornate "do" of the Roman empress Faustina the Elder. A patient model lent her flowing locks to Mannetti who layered braids and hair pieces for three hours until he reached Faustina-like proportions. A videotape of the event is on view this fall in the museum's galleries in conjuction wit the exhibition The Moon and the Stars; Afterlife of a Roman Empress.

- end of newsetter -