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(1 - 2 of 2)
- Creator
- Askew, Pamela, Carroll, Eugene, Drouilhet, Elizabeth, Hunter, Mary Alice, Murphy, Joan
- Date
- [after 1984]
- Text
-
All-4i urn!‘ ‘ll Minute for Leila Barber >Leila Cook Barber, who died on December h, l98h, at the of 8l, was a member of the Vassar faculty for 37»years. taught in the Art Department, which she joined in l93l, tH her retirement in I968. Of that generation that in its youth placed more value iod D. I €fl t0 the personally creative than on conformity to professional xy, Leila Barber could and did say of herself: "I am piece. I've never published anything. I have no donlt know why...
Show moreAll-4i urn!‘ ‘ll Minute for Leila Barber >Leila Cook Barber, who died on December h, l98h, at the of 8l, was a member of the Vassar faculty for 37»years. taught in the Art Department, which she joined in l93l, tH her retirement in I968. Of that generation that in its youth placed more value iod D. I €fl t0 the personally creative than on conformity to professional xy, Leila Barber could and did say of herself: "I am piece. I've never published anything. I have no donlt know why they kept me.“- Generations of stu- s, however, and department members, colleagues and col- administrators knew exactly why she was invaluable to College, why it can be said that she has not left her Simply because formalized professional ambition was Leila Barber, this minute, to record her contri- ion to Vassar College must go beyond the framework of academic vita. A phrase often used by Leila to characterize others was bbrm I er and shaker.“ Leila was not a shaker, but she was a r and shaper. And it is the shape of things that she If cared to fashion and foster, or encourage and sup- that became incorporated into the mainstream of learn- enhancing its quality and affirming at the same time values of larger social enterprise. What she gave shape may, perhaps, be traced to her study of philosophy and logy as an undergraduate at Bryn Mawr fiollege, from ch she received her B.A. in I925, and to her study of history, begun under the famed Giorgianna Goddard King. earned her M.A. in art history in I928 at Radcliffe, re she did further graduate work until l93l. Related to these fields of study, and what might be d to lie at the heart of Leila Barber's accomplishments ra fundamentally domestic ideal. "Domestic" is not meant the narrow sense here -- not at all implying a channeling energies to private ends -- but signifying that personal where what is within can be ordered and arranged, ex- and controlled, -- to visible effect. It was the from which an inner dynamic of energy radiated out- in many directions: a base from which a response to late surroundings was extended to a critical concern a larger environment -- with working spaces, archi- re and landscape. It was the launching point for a ectory of thought that carried personal compassion into al action -- in her later years to serving meals on ls, to recording for the blind. The domestic core was hstone not only for personal social life, but for Ial responsibility, including her vigilant concern for qual' ' . ' ty of campus life And it was the source of the s reach of her truly liberal point of view which u>forward looking and positive a way embraced every tive idea that could potentially bring about greater -2- understanding, more perceptive knowledge or pleasure, or improved social condition. The operative pattern of her gifts and dedication emerges clearly in her contributions to Vassar College. Part of each summer she worked on student rooming with the College warden, Mrs. Drouilhet; by l9hO she was head resident of Josselyn House; and from i955 on, house- fellow at Josselyn. During the Second World War she helped plan and inaugurate a college system of cooperative living in which household tasks formerly done by maids and white angels were rotated among the students in each dormitory. In addition to getting the work done, this, she thought, brought students of different backgrounds together, and induced a sense of communal responsibility and an active participation in the care for one's environ- ment. She was also chairman of the wartime faculty com- mittee called the Key Center of information at Vassar, which, by appointment of the Office of Education, served as a distribution center for information about the war and postwar problems to six neighboring counties. She represented the Key Center on the Vassar Coordinating Council for War Activities, and served on the council's advisory panel of faculty members who helped students to. choose individual programs of preparation for war service. She also chaired the Emergency Committee, which formu- lated the College defense program. Her committee service for the College, however, en- compassed the entire range of academic process, from visiting schools and talking with prospective students, to the Committee on Student Records, to the Curriculum Committee, to the Board of Residents which advised stu- dents in each house -- lHO in Joss -- to the advising of majors in Art History. She was chairman of the Art De- partment from i965 to i968; and following her retirement, she was briefly Acting Dean of Studies. Her advising, house-fellowing and teaching brought her into touch with an exceptionally wide range of students, with countless of whom she formed enduring friendships. She was master- ful at bringing along the C student; she was a bulwark to those having a difficult time in college, and she was a fearless defender to parents of individual freedom as F. Scott Fitzgerald realized when Leila Barber took him to task for his views concerning the social life of his daughter. In another vein, she was both awe-inspiring and for- midable: formidable in the authority, strength of voice and definitive manner in which she expressed her views; awe-inspiring in her presence, which was stately, ex- ceptional in grandeur and beauty and impeccable in every detail from coif to couture. Today she would be called a"role modelfl indeed she inspired a student who saw her 4 ! < I l l -3- alecture last winter to write of her "perfectly seated re,“ finding her "marvelous," and evoking more genera- mm of students than she realized when she wrote, "Perhaps was the child in me that caused the memory of Leila Bar- to become forever crystallized within me." But the phrase "role model," which now verges on empty rgmm is one that Beila Barber would not have used except etiously. Abstraction was not something that experience ted into, but something drawn from it. For this reason, g others, she excelled in the art of teaching. Many hers reach their students; but singular was Leila's le, projection of voice and logically sustained develop- t of analysis and idea. What she said made an indelible ression, and not least because of her invention of Hking, witty and vivid turns of phrase often drawn from commonly shared worlds of food and fashion. Dazzlingly iculate, and lucidly clear, she was able, just in the ling, to raise every work of art that she projected on screen to a higher power, or to consign it to a limbo inferiority where the works of those who misunderstood styles of others seemed rightly to belong. She made history itself a profoundly aesthetic and human--as l as historical-- discipline. k When Leila Barber joined the Art Department, she became third member, teaching twelve l05 conference sections a course in ancient art. It was she who shaped the intro- tory survey course, writing and revising its extensive labus. Printed annually, it was a booklet eagerly t after and cherished by graduate students at other in- tutions long after it ceased to be produced. There was, idly a historical period in the survey course that she not at some time taught herself. She taught American hting as well, and on the advanced level, medieval art iuaiéan Renaissance art from Giotto to Tintoretto beyond, though Tuscan painting of the Fourteenth and teenth Centuries was her special field. With growing ialization in the discipline, no one else in the de- rmwnt could do all that Leila Barber could do, or with intelligence and knowledge that she did it. No one before, and certainly no one has since. Covering the Md, shaping the developing discipline through the curri- lum at Vassar, she was absolutely integral to that llence of teaching and training for which the Vassar Department was so widely renowned in mid-century. A rof the Renaissance Society of America and the Col- Art Association of America, she was well known in art historical world, and it was well known by her. Her shaping of programs extended, moreover, beyond the department. In the Forties, she was a staunch advocate the three-year plan, participating in it. This was an ative arrangement of semesters and of curricular _4_ offerings that enabled students in the war years to gradu- ate in three rather than four years. Part of the raison d'etre of the plan was its potential for encouraging stu- dents to go on to graduate work, to have already launched themselves on a course of advanced study within the canonicm four years. Study in the form of seeing, knowing first hand and re-viewing the works of art that she taught early establishw a regular pattern of summer travel. It was not altogether uneventful. In l936, in Spain with J. B. Ross from the History Department, she was trapped in the bombing of Gran-i ada at the outbreak of the Spanish Civil War. The New York Times photographed them and headlined their ‘Escape by Plane from Rebel Stronghold in Spain.“ They were rescued in a H-seater piloted by the Comte de Sibour, for whom Leila characteristically, held the map that guided them to Tangien In her teaching years she traveled mostly to the Continen including Russia, but especially to Italy; and in the years of her retirement she spent long intervals in Greece and made repeated trips to England.i Although she traveled ex- tensively with undiminished interest in all visible mani- festations of life and civilization, she had a great spiflt socially for those enterprises on the local seene, including the League of Women Voters, to whom she gave her enthusiasflc support. An alumna who had enjoyed Leila's l05 lectures some years earlier returned to work at Vassar. Still regarding Leila with the awe inspired by their earlier teacher-studan relationship, it was some time before she could stop ad- dressing her as ‘Miss Barber.“ However, in the years fifllow-% ing Leila's retirement, they shared many happy times to- gether. These ranged from the concerts and opera workshops in Skinner, and the Drama Department productions, to Honi Cole and his tap-dancing troupe in concert at the Bardavon. Leila's great capacity for enjoying a variety of experi- ences, and her witty comments on the proceedings, made these evenings and many another outing to museums in Williamstown and New Haven a delight. A strong and loyal supporter of the arts in Pough- keepsie, Leila Barber could be seen at virtually every im- portant cultural event. After her retirement she regularly attended concerts, plays and lectures at Vassar and at the Bardavon. She was a major supporter of the Bardavon and a patron of the Hudson Valley Philharmonic. A great film buff, she became the first member of the Bardavon Film So- ciety. She also supported Vassar's Friends of the Art Ga lery and Barrett House. With her unfailing enthusiasm for budding talent, she never missed an audition for the Young Artists Competition, and she played a vital part in guiding a local student play- t,l l l l I 1 l i i J 1 ’ l l 4 4 l 1 l l l 1 l ti fl l 1 § f l I 1 I l l 4 $ l '1 J l x l ! ii i 1 l 1 i l l I _ 1 l 1 .4 E 1 1 i l i -5- roduction, "Mass Appeal " Her personal involvement the arts was boundless No wonder she was heard to "It makes me weary to think of all I shall have done weeks from now." nt, Bill C. Davis, in creating his successful Broad- a ' .' ' D For all that she did do for the College and Art De- fl. af l * ent, art history and the community, we are deeply u . " Respectfully submitted, Pamela»Askew Eugene Carroll Elizabeth Drouilhet Mary Alice Hunter Joan Murphy \ l I l l I l 1 l l l § l v l ll ll | l M w l l J ll ill 7‘! ii !. i l 4 I I 1 I l P l F
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- Creator
- Pommer, Linda Nochlin, Barber, Leila Cook, Groves, Earl, Kuretsky, Susan Donahue, Askew, Pamela
- Date
- October 14, 1981