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Newsletter - Spring 2002
Future Exhibitions

Changing Prospects: The View from Mount Holyoke
3 September - 8 December, 2002

The first major loan exhibition following the reopening will examine the historical significance of Mt. Holyoke, the prominent mountain from which the college takes its name. One of the nation's cultural icons, especially in the 19th century, the mountain continues to exert its influence in varying manifestations today.

Mt. Holyoke was attracting substantial numbers of visitors to western Massachusetts by the early decades of the 19th century. To accommodate the tourists, Northampton businessmen arranged to cut a carriage road and path to the summit. In 1821 a simple house was constructed for shelter and refreshments. In 1851, the original house was replaced by a small hotel with a dining room and six apartments for overnight guests. A few years later, an inclined railway carried visitors from the carriage road to what had become known as the Prospect House. During the 1830s and 1840s, the peak attracted approximately 3000 visitors annually.

There is a significant body of 19th-century literature related to the site as a favorite resort for travelers, both European and American. Literary travelers included Ralph Waldo Emerson and Nathaniel Hawthorne, among many others. In the 1790s, Yale University President Timothy Dwight deemed the view from Mt. Holyoke the "richest" in New England.

The combination of wilderness and cultivated landscape was the most noted feature of the panorama afforded by Mt. Holyoke. The wilderness symbolized the raw power of the unspoiled continent where the colonists had forged an empire. The orderly fields bore witness to the hard labor of the pioneers who tamed the wilderness and made it flourish. Countless painted, drawn, and printed representations of the views of and from Mt. Holyoke emphasize this contrast between the wild and the orderly. No representation is more famous than the 1836 painting by Thomas Cole known today as The Oxbow, which will be on loan from The Metropolitan Museum of Art. The story of Mt. Holyoke as an icon, a destination, and a subject for artists and writers continued into and through the 20th century. A 1921 illustrated publication, which will be included in the exhibition, describes the mountain as providing "the Grandest Cultivated View in the World." Literary figures who have written about the mountain in recent decades include Sylvia Plath, Adrienne Rich, and Mount Holyoke College's own Mary Jo Salter. Recently, interest in the cultural significance of the site has been revived by an attempt to develop the hillside for new homes. The proposal inspired a lively and sometimes heated debate. Contemporary painters and photographers still use the mountain regularly as a subject.

There has been a strong connection between the mountain and Mount Holyoke College, virtually since the year after Thomas Cole executed his famous painting. The college opened in 1837 as a result of Mary Lyon's efforts. She was adamant that the school not be named after her, or indeed after any individual; rather she wanted the name of her school for women tied to something enduring, eternal. The exhibition will document and illustrate thesubsequent history of ritual connections, such as seniors' mountain day when seniors climbed to the top and slept overnight. To this day, Mount Holyoke continues the tradition of mountain day for all students.