In the News

Art imitates art--While filmgoers across the country are lining up for the trendy new film Basquiat, regular visitors to the MHC Art Museum can feel just a wee bit superior. Our museum was way ahead of the trend in recognizing the talent of the graffiti artist who became an overnight sensation in the art world during the 1980s. The exhibition Jean-Michel Basquiat: The Blue Ribbon Paintings was organized by, and debuted at, the MHC museum in 1994. Since then, it's traveled to five other states and is currently on view in Miami's Museum of Contemporary Art. MHC Art Museum curator Wendy Watson says it's not unusual for a College-created exhibition to travel to other prestigious museums, but admits that the subject of most of their shows usually isn't on display at local multiplexes as well.

MHC bucks the odds for women in science--A new study by the University of Pennsylvania shows that, although women receive 55 percent of all bachelor's degrees, they earn far less than their share of degrees in the sciences. For example, only 18 percent of all bachelor's degrees in physics were awarded to women, according to the UPenn study. Mount Holyoke, on the other hand, has a much stronger record of educating female science majors. Twenty percent of the class of 1996 majored in the sciences, and, of course, 100 percent of them were female!