Newsletter - Spring 2004
From the Director

Typically the museum staff is focused on programs related to current exhibitions and projects forthcoming. But this spring, we can't help but look back as well. Diane Arbus: Family Albums, a complex and challenging undertaking, was accomplished with the support and collaboration of our colleagues at the Spencer Museum of Art, the University of Kansas, Lawrence. Four years in the making, the show opened last fall and was immediately hailed as "provocative" and "important"; its contents described as "a gold mine." The enthusiastic response from our audiences and from media outlets across the country was gratifying.

The exhibition is still very much with us. Currently on view at the Grey Gallery, New York University, it will travel on to Portland, Maine; the University of Kansas; Portland, Oregon; Athens, Georgia; and Winston-Salem, North Carolina. As I write, I am negotiating with the first of a group of museums that expressed interest in the show after the initial travel venues were finalized. Because the photographs can tolerate some additional exposure and the significance of the project is abundantly clear, the co-organizers have agreed to add one more venue.
In the meantime, the weeks march on. Two new exhibitions are on view: The Intimate Baroque: Small Paintings from the John Ritter Collection and Witnessing the Nuremberg Trials: Photographs by Raymond D'Addario. Two more, Light in the Landscape: Photographs by Ann Ginsburgh Hofkin (class of 1965) and The Sporting Woman: The Female Athlete in American Culture, will open in April in the White Print Room and the Weissman Gallery, respectively. All of these are described elsewhere in this newsletter.

Mount Holyoke students were involved in all of these exhibitions, especially The Sporting Woman. Twelve students took the planning seminar I taught last fall. Working in pairs, one team studied the athletic wear collection housed at the Kendall Sports and Dance Complex. They selected from dozens of outfits that date from the 1880s to the present and demonstrate how sportswear very gradually provided more freedom of movement. Another duo examined the cache of athletic photographs in Mount Holyoke's Archives and Special Collections. The images they chose reveal the fascinating history of Mount Holyoke as a leading advocate of physical activity for women. One group researched motion pictures that have focused on female athletes, including Pat and Mike and Pumping Iron II: The Women. Another investigated the impact of and challenges faced by Title IX since its 1972 enactment. Others worked on images of woman engaged in particular sports, including golf and soccer.

The museum's Student Advisory Committee has a new name: the Society of Art Goddesses. Meeting weekly, they plan art-related activities and try to raise the museum's profile among students. Last fall they focused on a poetry reading related to the Arbus exhibition and the theme of family-however it might be grouped or defined. English department faculty Leah Glasser and Robert Shaw juried the entries, and the winners read their poetry, along with nationally known poets Amy Dryansky, Daniel Hall, Mary Jo Salter, and Robert Shaw. More than eighty came to the event, thanks to the students' marketing efforts. Thank you, Goddesses, and we look forward to more activities this spring.