Mount Holyoke College

Rachel Rosenthal
"What's Luck Got to Do with It?":
The Extraordinary in Art and Life

Rachel Rosenthal, the acclaimed artistic director and founder of The Rachel Rosenthal Company, innovative and revolutionary performer, and bold animal rights activist, will deliver the third annual lecture in the Leading Women in the Arts series and the final lecture in the 2007-2008 Bearing Witness lecture series of the Weissman Center for Leadership and the Liberal Arts. Rosenthal believes in the power of interdisciplinarity, change, and the bold unpredictability of forms, bodies, sights, and sounds. She has been hailed by critics as a "monument and a marvel" for her pioneering performance techniques.

Rosenthal is known widely for developing a performance technique that is revolution for its integration of elements. She blends text, movement, voice, choreography, improvisation, inventive costuming, dramatic lighting and wildly imaginative sets in ways that produce "an unforgettable 'total theater' experience." In the last two and a half decades, she has presented over forty full-scale performance pieces nationally & internationally. Critics celebrate her performance triumphs and she has been ranked alongside Robert Wilson, Ping Chong, Richard Foreman, Meredith Monk and Laurie Anderson.

In her Spring 2008 Leading Women in the Arts lecture, Rosenthal, who asserts, “who are you and what you make cannot be separated,” will deliberate further on her perspectives on the inextricable links between the personal and the political, and reflect further on the extra-ordinary nature of art and life. In addition to the public lecture, Rachel Rosenthal's guest residency will include a movement workshop, discussions with students and faculty in the arts, and a leadership lunch with students from all disciplines.

Event Details
Date: Thursday, April 10
Time: 7:00 p.m.
Speakers: Rachel Rosenthal
Place: Gamble Auditorium, Art Building, Mount Holyoke College
Free and open to the public.

Students are invited to a luncheon seminar with Rachel Rosenthal, performer and artistic director of her own theatrical company, highlighting the practice and work of art. Preregistration required.

Ann Hamilton, an accomplished and extremely versatile contemporary visual artist, will deliver the second lecture in the Weissman Center’s Leading Women in the Arts series. Hamilton, who has been hailed as one of America’s most provocative contemporary installation artists, will be in residence during Spring 2007. During her time at Mount Holyoke, she will deliver a public lecture on her work, participate in discussions with senior Studio Art students as well as students from across the Arts, and be the guest of honor at a leadership seminar for students from all disciplines.

Ann Hamilton is renowned for her site-specific works and provocative uses of materials and medium. In 1999, she was chosen to represent the United States at the historic Venice Biennale. Her presentation, which focused on American slavery and oppression, incorporated the use of Braille and vivid red powder that rendered words and language of the exhibit visible. Her commissions include the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania Allegheny Riverfront Park which received the Progressive Architecture Citation Award, Corpus for Mass MoCA North Adams, Masschusetts, and commissioned works for the San Francisco Public Library, the Seattle Central Library and the University of Minnesota.

Students participated in a leadership luncheon with renowned installation artist Ann Hamilton and alumnae guest speakers. The gathering featured engaging conversations about art, academia, exhibitions, and professions. Alumnae guests included Jane Fleck Eccles ’54, Susan Mohl Powers ' 66, and Maura Kehoe Collins ‘83.

Alumnae Biographies
Jane Fleck Eccles ’54, a native of Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, began her Mount Holyoke years studying philosophy. Eventually, though, she immersed herself in art history and flourished as an artist while working with Edward Corbett, a California abstract painter who taught at the College from 1953 until 1962. Recently, she was invited to exhibit her handmade paper at the prestigious Biennale Internazionale dell’Arte Contemporanea in Florence, Italy. She is working now with pastel chalks and oil paints from her home on Cape Cod.

Susan Mohl Powers ' 66 studied studio art, astronomy, and physics during her years at Mount Holyoke. After participating in the M.F.A. sculpture program at the University of Minnesota, she completed the M.F.A. degree in Visual Design at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth. The New York Times hailed her first solo exhibition at the Squibb Corporate Headquarters in Princeton, N.J. as “striking for its adventurousness and its emphatic presence.” Her work is part of numerous public and private collections, and her studio is located in a nineteenth-century granite mill in Fall River, Massachusetts.

Maura Kehoe Collins ‘83, graduated from Mount Holyoke College with a B.A. in Art History and a minor in Asian Studies. She has two decades of experience in conservation and arts administration, and is the founder of Artiphile, an independent art advisory firm. As an undergraduate, she worked as a curatorial assistant in the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum, and as acting registrar in 1980 initiated a project to computerize the Museum's catalogue.

Trisha Brown launched the Leading Women in the Arts series with an illuminating guest residency that featured a public lecture, master classes, and recitals. She offered compelling reflections and analyses of dance, the body, design, and choreography. Brown focused especially on Set and Reset, a masterpiece created first in 1983 that established her as a pioneering force in postmodern dance and a leader in abstract choreography. Set and Reset, one of Brown’s most compelling and well-known pieces, has been hailed for its explorations of visibility and invisibility, its flirtations with the boundaries of the stage, and its evocative costumes.

Set and Reset is an innovative project of restaging that provided student dancers with intriguing opportunities for immersion into Brown’s choreographic process. Members of the Five-College Dance Department performed the piece and experienced first-hand the challenge and transcendence of Brown’s artistic vision.