May 6, 2005
Newsmakers
In
Essence
Beverly Daniel
Tatum, a former Mount Holyoke College faculty member and current
president of Spelman College is featured in the May issue
of Essence magazine in an article titled “Beautiful Ones: 35
of the Most Remarkable Women in the World.” A well-established
scholar, teacher, author, and race relations expert, Tatum spent
13 years at Mount Holyoke as professor of psychology, department
chair, dean of the College, and acting president prior to her appointment
as the third black woman to lead Spelman College.
Hetch’n
Post
Lots
of ink has been devoted to the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum
lately. On April 5 the Los Angeles Times printed
a giant 14.5 x 11.5 inch full-color image of the museum's Hetch
Hetchy Canyon, painted by Albert Bierstadt
in 1875, in its “Outdoors” section.
This Yosemite Valley “twin,” also known as Hetch
Hetchy Valley, is part of Yosemite National Park, but, following
a highly controversial Congressional order signed by Woodrow
Wilson, it was flooded in the early twentieth century to provide
a water supply for San Francisco. Restoration efforts, beginning
with the removal of the dam, are gaining momentum. The image,
which accompanied a short story by Greg Sarris that imagines
a future in the valley “After the Fall,” gives the
world an artful view of what was and what again could be.
The
same day that the L.A. Times story appeared, Tom Philp
of the Sacramento Bee won the Pulitzer Prize in editorial writing
for
his series urging the restoration of Yosemite's Hetch Hetchy
Valley. The museum sent congratulations, alerting him not only
to the Bierstadt
painting but also to the delightful letter from the artist to
the ladies who purchased it for the museum in 1876. Philp immediately
requested a photo, which the Bee ran in full color Sunday, April
10, on the back page of the special publication that consolidated
all the editorials. (Fine-art giclée reproductions of
the museum's Hetch Hetchy Canyon are available in a
variety of sizes
and prices. Go to www.mtholyoke.edu/offices/artmuseum/whatsnew.html for
a discount code and link.)
Two
years ago Deborah Landowne ’82
created a 19-minute documentary, titled Hetch Hetchy: Yosemite's
Lost Valley, that featured the Bierstadt painting.
KWMR, the west Marin County, California, community radio station,
interviewed her on April 18 for a show about filmmakers at
the Marin Environmental Film Festival in San Rafael, where the
documentary
will be screened on April 23. Preview the film at www.hetchhetchy.org/catalog/hh_yosemites_lost_valley.html.
Meanwhile,
the museum’s current exhibition Architecture
of Silence: Cistercian Abbeys of France—Photographs by
David Heald is receiving attention as well. On April 15 the Chronicle
of Higher Education devoted its full-page “Endpaper” to
the exhibition. Three large photographs, accompanied by text
by Terryl Kinder from the award-winning book of the same title,
were
included in the article, titled “A Universe in Harmony.” The
exhibition is on view through July 3. The catalogue is available
at the museum at a special rate. David Heald is the son of
Barbara Legg Heald ’46.
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