Senior Spotlights

SENIOR SPOTLIGHT: Merlyn Maldonado Lopez

BY NOELLE MUNI

Merlyn Maldonado Lopez ’22, a double major in art history and an individualized major titled “Magazine and Popular Culture in Media,” is the curator of one of Schmucker Art Gallery’s newest exhibits “Martin Puryear: 40 Years Since Sentinel.” Reflected in the marriage of her majors, Maldonado’s drive toward curation came to her as a combination of her love of art and communications. After taking her first class in art history here at Gettysburg, she knew that it was something she wanted to continue.

The exhibit, a reflection on Martin Puryear’s stone sculpture on the college campus, the Sentinel, contains not only the history of the sculpture, but also many original two-dimensional drawings and prints from the now widely successful artist.

When asked about how she came to curate the exhibit, Maldonado explained that it had been in the works for quite some time. It was during the spring of Maldonado’s sophomore year that her art history advisor, Professor Nicholas Miller, first mentioned the project to her as the 40th anniversary of the Sentinel statue approached. During Maldonado’s time as a Kolbe Fellow this past summer, the project fully came to fruition.

Maldonado completed her fellowship under the guidance of Professor Shannon Egan, Director of the Schmucker Art Gallery, and over the summer completed all of the research and curation of the show as her Kolbe Fellowship project. She said of her time in the fellowship, “My experience with the Kolbe Fellowship was great. All the people involved were very supportive and willing to help you and your project out. I would absolutely recommend it to other students.”

“Martin Puryear: 40 Years Since Sentinel” isn’t Maldonado’s first exhibit here at Gettysburg, though. When taking her art history methods course, Maldonado worked alongside her classmates in the collaborative curation of another exhibit, titled “From the Yellow Springs to the Land of Immortality: Chinese Art and Artifacts.” During this process, she and the rest of her class worked together to prepare the exhibit, which displayed Chinese artifacts from the College’s Special Collections. This first collaborative show taught Maldonado how much she enjoyed curation, particularly the research process behind curating an exhibit.

Curating the Sentinel exhibit, however, was a different beast: instead of being the collaborative effort of many students, she was doing the research and writing exclusively on her own and with the guidance of her advisor.

She described the individual nature of the project to be the most challenging part of the experience, especially while completing her fellowship remotely. Presenting the exhibit at her Gallery Talk on Sept. 8 was “a relief,” she said, as she now feels confident that all her work is finalized, on display, and being enjoyed by the Gettysburg community.

When asked what the greatest takeaway from her experience curating at Gettysburg was, Maldonado said that she would advise anyone, especially younger students, to actively engage with the campus.

“If you want to do something on campus, put yourself out there!” she counseled. “There are always so many opportunities and [so many] people willing to help you.”

Regarding her future plans following graduation, Maldonado is keeping her options open. “I do not have any post-grad plans aside from graduate school,” she explained. “I am not attached to a location, so [I’ll go] wherever I have a good opportunity.”

“Martin Puryear: 40 Years Since Sentinel” will be on display at the Schmucker Art Gallery through Nov. 6, 2021.

SENIOR SPOTLIGHT: Britney Brunache

BY LAKEN FRANCHETTI

Britney Brunache ’22, a senior theatre arts and psychology double major, always knew that theatre was going to play a major role in her time at Gettysburg College. In the summer of 2020, she wrote a play adaptation of the novel Your Blues Ain’t Like Mine by Bebe Moore Campbell. This sparked a deep interest in writing and directing her own piece of work. Now, a little over a year later, she is preparing to present her original play, It’s Not Black or White. “

It’s a historical fiction play about Haiti in 1960. It’s based on the dictatorship [of] the Duvalier regime,” Brunache explained. Her interest in this topic came from a documentary she watched months before beginning to write, and the exploration into her own heritage intrigued her as well.

“I found the topic interesting because I’m also Haitian,” Brunache said. “I didn’t know a lot about my Haitian history until I started watching this documentary. My parents were alive during that time, so being able to ask them what it was like during that dictatorship was very interesting.”

Inspired, she began the writing process. Brunache intends to pair It’s Not Black or White with an educational aspect by inviting a panel of family members to the play to talk to the audience about what it was like to live during that time.

The play, which Brunache plans to show from Nov. 20 through 21, showcases her writing and directing skills and serves as the culmination of her senior capstone project. Having completed two independent studies in directing, she always knew her capstone would involve her directing, yet the subject matter was never clear until a professor suggested she apply to the Kolbe Summer Fellows Program.

“My professor Susan Russell … was the one who nominated me to apply for the Fellowship. I didn’t think I could do it [at first], because normally, the people that get in are doing research projects or writing research papers. I didn’t know if me proposing to write a play would be good enough, but it was, and they were actually really interested in it,” Brunache recalled.

After finishing her first draft of the sixty-page play in one month, Brunache used the remaining month of her Kolbe Fellowship to revise, rewrite, and edit the play so that it would be ready to see the stage this fall.

Brunache is passionate about is giving first-year students the opportunity to be on stage, regardless of whether they have previous acting experience. Having heard firstyears’ apprehensions to get involved in theater due to the suspected seniority of roles, Brunache wanted to take an approach to casting for her play that would allow first-years the opportunity to be featured in major roles. Additionally, she has been a voice for getting people of color onto the stage at Gettysburg College.

“Something that has been a mission of mine is to diversify the [theatre] department, because when I came in as a first-year, there were only two people of color. And so, every play that I direct, I make sure to have it be a predominantly colored play… I just want to make sure to have more inclusion with that, and so now with my capstone that was another thing that I [was thinking] about. Having people of color in theatre is very important to me.”

While her long-term goal remains directing, Brunache will be a high school English teacher in Philadelphia after graduating this spring, a job she secured through the Teach for America program last year.