Visual Learning Conference

Saturday, September 29, 2012
8:30-10:30 AM, WCC 233

Creativity, Leadership, and Innovation through the Arts
John Stomberg, Director, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum
Ellen Alvord, Coordinator of Academic Affairs, Mount Holyoke College Art Museum

John Stomberg and Ellen Alvord presented on the curriculum currently under construction at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum. The Museum has already adopted a model of curriculum support and in the upcoming phase of its evolution will take the next step: curriculum generation. The Museum is developing museum-centered programs that take creativity as the meta-goal by rethinking the specific topics that they address. While maintaining their connection to Art History and Museum Studies, the Museum is developing an object-based curriculum for the field of Creativity Studies. By capitalizing on their role as the interdisciplinary crossroads on campus, and the site of an important and diverse collection, the Museum can evolve into a center for innovative thought and assert its centrality to liberal education.

John Stomberg has nearly two decades of experience in the teaching museum field, having held curatorial and leadership positions at the Boston University Art Galleries and the Williams College Museum of Art before being appointed Florence Finch Abbott Director of the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum and Lecturer in Art in 2011. He teaches courses in the History of Photography, Modern and Contemporary Art, and American Art. His publications include monographic studies of photographersMargaret Bourke-White, Jules Aarons, Verner Reed, and Ulrich Mack; painters John Walker and Jon Imber; and thematic studies such as  Looking East: Brice Marden, Michael Mazur, Pat Steir. His curatorial work has included installations by Zhan Wang and Fiona Tan; one person exhibitions for Liu Zheng, Edward Steichen, Hendrik Werkman and Dorothea Tanning; and group shows Beyond the Familiar: Photography and the Construction of Community and Photography at the Frontier of Physics and Art. In 2007 Stomberg was co-curator and contributing author for Beautiful Suffering: Photography and the Traffic in Pain.  Stomberg's current areas of research focus on artistic collaboration and the role that teaching museums can have in fostering innovation and leadership through the study of art. Degrees: Georgetown, B.A.; Boston University, M.A. and Ph.D in Art History.

Ellen Alvord is the Andrew W. Mellon Coordinator of Academic Affairs at the Mount Holyoke College Art Museum. She has worked at a number of other institutions including the Yale University Art Gallery, the Smith College Museum of Art, theGuggenheim Hermitage Museum, and the Las Vegas Art Museum. Ms. Alvord has a Master’s degree in Museum Education from The College of William and Mary, and has worked in the field for fifteen years. In her current position, she collaborates with faculty from a wide range of academic departments to develop engaging, cross-disciplinary experiences with original works of art. She oversees approximately 165 class visits representing over 24 different disciplines each year. She also organizes interdisciplinary faculty seminars related to object-based learning. Degrees: The College of William and Mary, M.A. in Museum Education.

Drawing from Nature/Island Biology: Asking questions across disciplines
Mary Griep, Professor of Art, St. Olaf College

Mary Griep spoke about a program of linked courses in Island Art (Drawing from Nature) and Island Biology at the Gerace Research Centre, San Salvador Island, Bahamas.  Art and biology students worked together exploring and capturing the natural history of San Salvador Island through art and investigative research.  The trip began with a presentation by Eric Cole (St. Olaf Professor of Biology) and Griep on the ways scientists and artists ask questions in their respective fields.  With an awareness of the similarities and differences in ways of approaching a new environment, the students’ work during this course culminated in an exhibition at St. Olaf and an in-house publication.  A synergy was created by having biology students receive training in natural history illustration, art and the historical links between art and science, while art students sat in on presentations regarding the marine biology of the island. 

Mary Griep's work has been shown nationally in exhibitions including the Chicago Navy Pier International Art Expositions, the Minneapolis Institute of Arts (MIA), and the Plains Museum among many others. International showings include exhibitions in Thailand, Finland and the Dominican Republic as well as several works in the US Art in Embassies Programs.

Griep has been awarded grants from the Minnesota State Arts Board and fellowships or residencies from Altos de Chavon in the Dominican Republic, the Ucross Foundation in Wyoming, the state of Montana, the University of South Dakota, Vermilion, the College of St. Catherine, the Anderson Center of Red Wing, and the Institute for the Study of Religion and Culture, Chiang Mai, Thailand. Her work is part of collections throughout the United States including Bank of America, General Mills, 3M, the MIA, Minnesota Museum of American Art, and Minneapolis Star Tribune. Degrees: Macalaster College, B.A.; Hamline University, M.A.

Moderator: 

Susan Singer
Laurence McKinley Gould Professor of the Natural Sciences, Carleton College