Newsletter - Spring 1999
From the Director

The current special exhibition Still Time: Photographs by Sally Mann, as well as the article in this Newsletter on one of our recent acquisitions (see Acquisitions), call attention to the museum's growing interest in photography and the ways photographs are increasingly being used by faculty and students at Mount Holyoke. It is particularly gratifying in this regard, that the museum's photographic collections have benefited from a number of important gifts in recent years.

Twenty-four photographs of the 1939 Golden Gate International Exposition, a gift from Mrs. Philip Herzig ('49), are the focus of a museum intern research project. Taken by Gabriel Moulin, the photographs record the architecture, sculpture, landscape design, and other artistic aspects of the exposition on Treasure Island in San Francisco Bay. The intern is investigating the career of Gabriel Moulin, the history of the Moulin Studios, and the cultural history of international expositions. Once documented, the photographs will be available for use by classes in American and international studies as well as art history.

The recent exhibition Berenice Abbott: The Camera Looks at Science was possible because of a generous gift from Mr. and Mrs. Joseph Lasser. Abbott is best known for her images of New York, but she also created magnificent scientific photographs, some of which demonstrate the effects of magnetic fields, the movement of objects in space, or the bending of light rays. The photographs in the exhibition were the subject of a gallery talk by curator Wendy Watson and physics professor Sean Sutton.

Ms. Watson is also at work on a forthcoming exhibition examining the career of Italian mountaineering photographer Vittorio Sella. Some 85 photographs will include images from his expeditions to the Caucasus, the Ruwenzori in Africa, the Himalayas, and Alaska. In conjunction with the show, plans are being developed for interdisciplinary programs involving a variety of departments across the campus including Russian Studies, East Asian Studies, and Geology. It is through such collaborative endeavors that the art museum seeks to provide new opportunities for learning-opportunities sparked by first-hand experience with works of art and enriched by a lively exchange of ideas and perspectives provided by the extraordinary faculty, staff, and students at Mount Holyoke College.

—Marianne Doezema