Newsletter - Spring 2003
From the Director

"I came for inspiration, and I got it" wrote one of the many visitors in the comment book last fall. Another inscribed: "How clever to save Mt. Holyoke's beauty so many ways at once -- and then to share it with us." More than 10,000 visitors from near and far came to see Changing Prospects: The View from Mount Holyoke. Some crossed our threshold for the first time especially because this special exhibition was on view. And others were old friends who eagerly returned after the renovation and expansion of our facility. Their enthusiastic responses gave all of us at the museum a huge dose of gratification.

The exhibition has now been dismantled, but a number of elements remain. The museum purchased two depictions of Mt. Holyoke that came to light during preparations for the show. Thomas Farrer's Mt. Holyoke was acquired in September 2002. The first Pre-Raphaelite landscape to come into the permanent collection, the painting was featured in the fall newsletter. Holyoke Range, Near Oxbow, Easthampton, Massachusetts, a stunning black-and-white watercolor by Alfred Leslie, one of the most prominent realist artists of the 20th century, will be included in the spring exhibition of recent acquisitions and promised gifts. And, of course, the book published to accompany Changing Prospects will be found in homes and libraries across the country for years to come.

Special exhibitions are transitory by nature, and all of us in the museum profession are mindful of the time and energy they require on the part of staff members. We are ever conscious of the financial resources they absorb. Today as never before, museums are challenged to attract the attention of our constituencies, in competition with a plethora of highly promoted leisure-time alternatives. Enticing cultural and educational opportunities abound. Many of us are asking: is it appropriate for art museums to enter into the blockbuster business of heavily advertised special exhibitions and programs?

On the occasion of the dedication of the newly reopened museum in September, James Cuno, then Elizabeth and John Moore Cabot Director of the Harvard University Art Museums and now director of the Courtauld Institute of Art, articulated the question in the form of a passionate plea. He called for a redirection of our focus toward what really makes museums unique -- their permanent collections. The objects we hold have the power to carry people to another time, to create a link to another person or another culture, in ways that large-screen films or the internet cannot. The catastrophic events of September 11, 2001, Cuno said, remind us of the important role of museums: "We have all heard stories of people going to museums in the days following the attacks on New York and Washington, just to be there, quietly, safely in the company of things that are beautiful, things that are impossibly fragile yet have lasted for centuries through wars and tumult to lay claim on our imaginations."

So, I am especially pleased that many visitors to the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum who wrote in the comment book last fall remarked on seeing the collection, or were just plain happy to have the galleries back: "Thank you for providing a space for art, and a space for us to see it" said one. "The transformation is wonderful," added another. "So glad you have reopened -- thanks."

—Marianne Doezema
Florence Finch Abbott Director