Works in Art |
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Alumni make their mark and their living in artistic pursuitsBy Ruth S. Intress |
Ann Bigley Robertson remembers Saturdays spent with her grandmother gazing at delicate porcelain and stunning portraits in a marble-halled museum.
Years later, on a high school field trip through the same gallery, Robertson recalls a transformative moment as she stood before one of Monet’s wistful cathedrals. When her art teacher drew the students closer, they could see, just on the surface, how the brilliant Impressionist laid heavy strokes and splotches of paint across the canvas.
“Listening to the teacher talk about Monet,” Robertson ’74 said, “I was hooked.” Thanks to a competing college’s lack of dormitory space, Robertson brought her passion for art and literature to Mary Washington.
“I never knew there was such a thing as an art history major. I thought I wanted to be a history major and special education teacher,” said Robertson. “But Mary Washington’s art history department had wonderful, creative professors. You were encouraged and pushed to your potential.”
Robertson continues to strive as she deals daily with great masterpieces. She is an exhibition officer at the National Gallery of Art, the museum of her girlhood tours.
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| Ann Bigley Robertson ’74 |
With a mathematician’s exactitude, Robertson acts partly as diplomat, partly as linguist and partly as trouble-shooter in negotiating behind-the-scenes details of securing loans of great art collections from around the world.
Both academic and experiential breadth are vital, said Robertson, noting she found both at Mary Washington, where she was a dual major in art history and English. “Exhibition organization is not something you study; it’s something you explore and learn about through experience.”
Such experience, nurtured in her adolescent jobs as a florist shop girl, “mannequin” model and special education tutor, also has taught Robertson patience. That virtue serves her well when she coordinates challenging exhibitions ranging from Vermeer paintings to ancient Cambodian sculptures.
As one of the National Gallery’s senior exhibition officers, Robertson administers six or more special showings a year and coordinates the myriad details and contracts that must be in place before priceless works go on view.
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| Lisa Graziose Corrin ’81 |
In the spotlight – and on the hot seat – of museum leadership is Lisa Graziose Corrin ’81. Since leaving her native Long Island, Corrin has been flying high in the arts world, imparting her distinct interpretive mark on museums in Baltimore, London, Seattle and Williamstown, Mass.
Recently named director of the Williams College Museum of Art, as well as one of the college’s lecturers in art, Corrin has joined the “Williams Mafia,” a phrase coined to acknowledge the college’s role in spawning several generations of academic- and museum-based leadership in art history.
“Williams traditionally has been formative in shaping individuals who have become directors of some of this country’s great museums – the Guggenheim, the Museum of Modern Art, the National Gallery, the Art Institute of Chicago,” she said. “In appointing me, the college has paid me the greatest compliment. I will be helping mentor the people who will go on to take my job someday.”
Such a coup is not likely to occur soon. Corrin, 46, established quite a reputation at the Seattle Art Museum, where she is continuing to oversee the completion of its Olympic Sculpture Park. The eight-acre waterfront park, scheduled to open later this year with sculptures by distinguished, historic and newer artists, will most reflect Corrin’s signature as an innovative art historian.
In her four years as deputy director and curator of modern and contemporary art at the Seattle Art Museum, Corrin was influential in helping conceive the museum’s expansion and in working with other curators to recast the presentation of the collection. Rather than follow the traditional encyclopedic approach of strictly segregating cultures, Seattle’s presentation features cross-cultural, cross-chronological and cross-creative relationships.
Corrin’s interdisciplinary approach to art was born at Mary Washington, where she received “a broad grafting” in literature, history and sciences that served her well in various positions – as chief curator at both the Contemporary Museum of Baltimore and London’s Serpentine Gallery and in her collaborations with the Victoria and Albert Museum and London’s Museum of National History.
Indeed, it was through her work for the Maryland Historical Society that Corrin made a splash with her 1992 exhibit, “Mining the Museum: An Installation by Fred Wilson.” Wilson, an African-American artist, reorganized the traditional historic collection through a different perspective. Corrin’s book on the subject has become a standard text in many graduate courses on contemporary art and American and museum studies.
To this day, Corrin reflects on the insights of Mary Washington’s retired art history professor Barbara Meyer. “She encouraged me to question the foundations of art history, to not just accept everything I read. That is what I am still doing in my work.”
Corrin and Robertson are at the top of their fields. But they aren’t alone among graduates of Mary Washington University’s art history and studio art department who are building vibrant full-time careers in the highly competitive art world.
This surprises some, who cite the University’s strong regional, if not yet national, reputation.
“Mary Washington is not a name you recognize right away,” acknowledged Stephen Griffin, a studio art professor with a master of fine arts degree from the University of Wisconsin. “I’ve had parents of prospective students say they’ve looked at hundreds of colleges, but that we rise to the top.”
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| Allison Stagg ’02 |
The quality of Mary Washington’s art programs attracted Allison Stagg ’02 to the University. Later, after serving as an intern at New York’s Metropolitan Museum of Art and enrolling in the graduate program at University College London, Stagg quickly realized that her Mary Washington experience distinguished her.
“There were a lot of American students from Ivy League schools. I was the only one from a small school,” said Stagg, who is pursuing her doctorate in American and British art. Her dream is to become a museum curator.
Despite the competition, Stagg considers herself “the fortunate one.” She said, “I wouldn’t give up my time at Mary Washington for any big-name school.”
The small size of the department – whose 111 majors last year ranked the two arts programs among the smallest third of University specialties – makes it a success, many say. The faculty’s dedication to both majors – art history and studio art – and the many students exploring art courses, graduates add, is what breeds excellence.
“Because it was a small program, I got a lot of attention,” said graphic designer Suzanne Augugliaro ’95. “I’m not sure you’d have that intimate experience at a large institution.
“I know from graduate school that I didn’t have coffee with my professors. But that’s what I did with Steve Griffin and Joe Di Bella at the Eagles Nest,” she said of the professors who joined Augugliaro at UMW’s casual eatery.
Nicole Nolker ’04 credits art history professor Joseph Dreiss with bringing architecture and modern art alive for her. Having studied sociology, history and creative writing before “ultimately realizing art history includes all those things,” Nolker said Dreiss’ classes and the encouragement of Di Bella, her first adviser, helped sway her toward a concentration in art.
“It’s not so much that we’re wonderful people,” Dreiss said. “It’s about the art – the value of art. That’s what I try to get across in my classes. I try to emphasize the importance of making art part of your daily life. I try to inspire students.”
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Nicole Nolker ’04 |
Inspiration for Mary Washington arts scholars comes as well from extracurricular studies on and off campus. Students work as catalogers, researchers, administrative aides and exhibition installers at the University’s duPont and Ridderhof Martin galleries, which hold permanent collections of more than 5,000 works.
Also, Washington, D.C., which is only an hour to the north, serves as an unparalleled backyard for arts students, who frequent the capital’s libraries and collections to research papers or prepare portfolios.
Further, the art department encourages students to travel abroad – the school offers an art program in Italy – and to pursue internships at museums around the country.
Stagg, for instance, worked in the campus galleries, studied at Oxford University and spent summers interning at various museums in New York – all before graduating. She subsequently interned at the Met, the National Gallery and the British Museum in London. “I was always encouraged to apply for major positions. Nothing was out of reach,” she said.
To help students land such significant positions, the department emphasizes the importance of broad liberal arts studies and foreign language skills.
“We’re teaching students to think creatively,” added Griffin, a painter, photographer and printmaker. “We’ve had plenty of students in studio art go on to graduate school. That’s usually difficult coming from a small college like ours.”
For budding artists, big-name credentials are valued less than highly creative and mature work. “The first thing galleries look at is the portfolio,” Griffin said. “If the work is strong, other things don’t matter as much.”
“Slackers don’t go into the arts,” said Dreiss, an art reviewer and writer who earned his Ph.D. at the State University of New York at Binghamton. “One thing I’ve seen a lot is students find something in art history that they latch onto and excel in. The discipline grows out of love for what you’re doing.”
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Michael Scoggins ’98 |
Take, for example, Michael Scoggins ’98. “I had this crazy idea that I could be a professional artist and survive off it. Now, that’s what I do every day and I love it,” said Scoggins, 33. “My days of living on peanut butter and not sleeping may not be over, but I’m building up to where I’m steady in showings and income.”
Scoggins uses the vehicle of childhood art – notebook paper – and transforms its blue lines, wrinkles and dog-eared edges into wall-sized pen and ink drawings. The text-filled canvases hang in galleries in Miami, Atlanta, Savannah and New York. His work is featured in a one-man show in New York’s Chelsea arts district gallery through April 8.
In 2004, a Scoggins show in Brooklyn caught the eye of The Metropolitan Museum of Art in New York, which purchased four of the mammoth pieces for its permanent collection. In February of this year, readers of the international art and culture magazine Modern Painters got a glimpse of Scoggins’ work in a feature on world-renowned modern art collector Jean-Charles de Castelbajac. In it, the fashion designer is pictured in his Paris flat framed by an immense canvas crammed with childlike scrawl, Letter, by Scoggins.
Scoggins “hit the ground running” in his graduate studies at the Savannah College of Art and Design, followed by his acceptance in the 2003 summer residency program at the Skowhegan School of Painting and Sculpture in Maine.
But it was his years double-majoring in political science and studio art at the University – while earning tuition working in his family’s Fredericksburg convenience store – that drilled him in the “tough mentality it takes” for a career in art.
“[Professor] Joe Di Bella really pushed…but he looked at me not just as a student but a fellow artist,” said Scoggins. “What made a difference was the individual attention I got, the ability to explore different things to find my own way.”
Di Bella exemplifies to students and colleagues the rigors and joys of art. His studio work and that of the department’s other faculty resonates with students, who see in their professors how art and related work can be combined for a fulfilling career.
Connections are important, too. Augugliaro happens to be a designer and public relations coordinator at the Williams College Museum of Art. After three years there, she is relishing new challenges under Corrin’s leadership. The two “get along like two houses on fire,” Corrin said. Augugliaro agreed, citing their mutual studies and their shared status as alumnae of Mary Washington and the State University of New York at Stony Brook.
News from art alumni about job opportunities steered Nolker, a former assistant in UMW’s Ridderhof Martin Gallery, to her current position as an exhibition assistant at the National Gallery. Among seven University graduates on the staff there, Nolker works closely with Ann Robertson.
Nolker, 24, finds her work – research and coordination of hundreds of documents for several exhibitions at a time – exhilarating, if a bit frenetic. She also brought up a downside for art majors. “It can be hard to find a job in art. I worried about that after graduating, but it ended up working out for me,” she said.
When meeting with students about career opportunities, Robertson puts in context the jobs available for art enthusiasts.
“You don’t have to be a curator or have a degree in art history. Museums have accountants, scientists, editors, horticulturists, musicians, publicists, fund-raisers and lawyers,” she said. “There’s a whole world in art museums.”
ARTIST IN RESIDENCE Before graduating, Lindsay R. Jones ’06 catapulted her career. She had one of her creations accepted in a prestigious art exhibit, Mid-Atlantic New Painting 2006. The UMW studio art major’s work “Annual” was among 31 entries accepted for display in the juried show at the Ridderhof Martin Gallery at Mary Washington. More than 450 works of art were submitted for the show, which was judged by Jonathan P. Binstock, curator of contemporary art at the Corcoran Gallery of Art in Washington, D.C. Director of University Galleries Thomas Somma knows the significance of such a choice. “The inclusion of Lindsay Jones’ painting in such a recognized professional and competitive juried exhibition is truly an impressive achievement,” Somma said, “especially when you consider the fact that she is just now completing only the undergraduate phase of her training.” Jones’ piece, a wall-sized collection of sketches of faces, hung alongside paintings of established artists. She used as inspiration a page in one of her father’s high school yearbooks. Jones said she plans to pursue a master of fine arts degree. Acceptance into the Mid-Atlantic show has solidified her career direction. “The experience has definitely contributed to my decision to pursue painting full time,” Jones said. |
Ruth S. Intress, a free-lance writer based in Lexington, Va., has reported extensively on higher education.