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Every picture tells a story: Students survey art on campus |
| By
Deanna Woolf |
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Jun 16, 2006 |
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A lunch between friends turned into a project that may change the face of The University of Toledo — literally.
In winter 2005, Dr. Diane Britton was dining in the newly renovated Libbey Hall with Dr. Carol Bresnahan, UT vice provost for academic programs; Dr. Penny Poplin Gosetti, executive assistant to the president; and Barbara Floyd, director of the Ward M. Canaday Center and university archivist.
As they noticed the dearth of female portraits in the dining area, Bresnahan assured them there were photographs of women in the hall — but "they were marginalized off in the bathroom."
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| This mural is in the African-American Student Enrichment Initiatives Office. |
Bresnahan explained she had brought the idea of a portraiture inventory to the UT President's Commission on Diversity, after kicking off a similar project at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, where she was an American Council on Education Fellow. She said the idea originated after she read about symposiums at Brown University on race and diversity that brought out the concept that "the environment in which we work has a visual impact on us."
Britton, UT professor of history, decided to take up the issue at the University with her HIST 4830/5830 Public History Theory class spring semester.
As part of the course, graduate students in the history program searched the campus for examples of public portraiture, cataloging and photographing examples of what they found. Their report, along with recommendations, will be presented to the President's Commission on Diversity this summer.
"The basic message of the project is this: Public art tells you something about the space you're in," Britton said. "If everything we know about UT's history and culture we learn from the public portraiture, what do we know?"
Well, maybe nothing. During her survey, student Stephanie Shook was struck by how bare the walls were. "We sometimes found nothing. We don't show how wonderful the University is," she said.
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| Walter B. Snyder's portrait is in Snyder Memorial Building — near a vending machine. |
Her classmates agreed. Justin Pfeifer said, "The dorms are seriously lacking. Most were bare ... The University has beautiful buildings and landscaping. But inside — it just reveals the hollowness of the beauty. The history is there. The portraits should be there."
But of the portraits that were there, the students found a lack of diversity — and a lot of what they called "old white guys." Of the 70 portraits, busts, plaques and photographs in public spaces on campus, 37 portrayed white male administrators and 16 showed white male donors.
However, art featuring students was more reflective of the UT community. For example, "In Savage Hall, there was a whole wall of past MVPs, back to the 1930s. It's extremely diverse," said Chris Block.
The students also noted diversity reflected in various murals, such as the ones located in the African-American Student Enrichment Initiatives Office in the Student Union and the chemistry department offices in Bowman-Oddy Laboratories.
And Drs. Howard Bowman and Harold Oddy reflect another finding — the lack of identification information for many of the portraits. The pictures of both men do not have any name plaques. Also doomed to obscurity is Walter B. Snyder. Eric Nachtman found his picture bolted to the wall across from the pop machines in Snyder Memorial Building. "There was a lot of mystery involved on who this guy was," Nachtman said. "I did extra research at the public library and was finally able to match the picture."
Along with the research and factual observations, many students felt the portraiture project opened their eyes to a world they had previously ignored. "Once you start looking at it and studying it — until you actually look at it — you don't know it's there," Block said. Nachtman recalled being in College of Engineering buildings and noticing "whole cases dedicated to alumni — their inventions, things they did after they left UT. These little shrines were all over. But they were vastly ignored. Like people were oblivious to it," Nachtman said.
Now that their work is done, the students have several recommendations to offer on UT's public portraiture. One suggestion is to hang photographs of entertainers and speakers in the hallways of the renovated Memorial Field House. With the help of the Canaday Center, Ian Amberts did some research and found many celebrities performed there. "Roy Orbison, Jimi Hendrix, Janice Joplin, the Kingston Trio. And speakers Andy Warhol and Maya Angelou," Amberts listed. "The University of Toledo was kind of a magnet for popular culture icons."
The students especially want portraits created for outstanding and diverse alumni, including Mildred Taylor, author of Roll of Thunder, Hear My Cry, and Dr. Nancy Collins, a stem cell researcher, and faculty members and administrators, including Sarah Williams, a member of UT's first Board of Trustees, and Dr. Lancelot Thompson, former UT vice president for student affairs and professor emeritus of chemistry.
"People might say we're trying to change the history of UT," Shook said. "But we're trying to bring out what's hidden."
"This course revealed how much we can change things," Pfeifer said. "Yielding results to an entire campus shows just how influential historians can be."
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