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The exhibition also serves as a reminder that the Davis is a teaching museum. The archives offer students an opportunity to interact with photographs in a more tangible and immediate manner than is possible by viewing high-resolution images on a computer screen. This makes the photography collection an invaluable resource not just for art-history majors but also for students in other disciplines. As Patricia Berman, Theodora L. and Stanley H. Feldberg Professor of Art, explains, “We are steeped in this medium every day. If you study contemporary culture, you need to understand photography—how it shapes your imagination, knowledge, and worldview.” For students in Carlos Ramos’ Cultures of Spain course, the impact on their worldview can be dramatic. Professor Ramos helped the Davis acquire a series of images of the early days of the Spanish Civil War and its impact on a small village. The photographer, a gifted amateur named Ramon Ruis, took pictures that are among the only documentation of the struggle that pitted neighbor against neighbor. Now, Ramos takes his classes to view the Ruis photographs and reflect on the turmoil of that era and how it inspired writers and artists, most notably Picasso. “I don’t know if the students realize how fortunate they are to have a museum of this caliber on campus,” Ramos says. Some photographs are so compelling that students gravitate toward them year after year. One such image is Arthur Rothstein’s Artelia Bendolph, Gee’s Bend, Alabama (1937), a near-perfect composition of a young African-American girl gazing out from a window of her
FALL 2012
sharecropper family’s log shack. Rebecca Bedell ’80, associate professor of art, writes in the catalog of the photograph’s iconic stature and how its richly textured layers of meaning have inspired many of her students’ research papers. Director Fischman describes the museum’s most recent acquisition, by Cindy Sherman, as a capstone to the entire exhibition project. “Untitled (Bus Riders) is early evidence of the path this celebrated photographer’s work would take,” she explains. “Her early works in particular demonstrate a rather uncanny relationship to art historical conventions—self-portraiture, impersonation, iconography. The acquisition is meaningful because it gives us a window on this emerging talent, but it also connects us to the moment in an emerging artist’s life that finds a parallel in the lives of young women at Wellesley College.” Like the students, the Davis’ collection will continue to grow, change, and develop its character. A Generous Medium marks a pivotal point in the history of the collection and solidifies its importance to academic life on campus. The exhibition, which closes on Dec. 16, will live on in a catalog available from the Davis Museum. It can be ordered from the College bookstore. April Austin writes on public-health topics for EDC, a global nonprofit organization based in Waltham, Mass., and is a former arts editor and writer at the Christian Science Monitor.
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Above: Artelia Bendolph, Gee’s Bend, Alabama Arthur Rothstein Gelatin silver print 8 7⁄ 8 x 12 in. 1937 (published 1980) Gift of Edith Davis Siegal (class of 1938)