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country. It is also a story of individuals who singularly and collectively “never took their hands from the plow”2 in their determination to use the Annual Exhibition as a catalyst to establish and build a permanent collection of art at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College.
Miss Louise
In 1900, Professor Louise Jordan Smith (1868–1928), the first art and French teacher among Randolph-Macon’s
five original faculty members when
the college opened in 1893, expressed
a bold plan to change curricula and attitudes throughout the educational system. Addressing the Third Capon Springs Conference for Education in the South on the importance of art education, Smith began her speech with a quotation from her friend and fellow educator Henry T. Bailey: “The end of all education is culture—that which conditions and crowns the larger, more abundant life.” Smith further explained:
I have a plan for accomplishing something in this direction.... I should like to see the walls of the public school and academy filled with good reproductions of master-pieces; and in college I want an annual loan exhibition.... This exhibition must contain only the best work that is done anywhere.... It should be understood that each year the best pictures should be bought for a permanent collection which will belong to the college.... This has never been tried in any school or country, as far as I know, but I
have spoken of it privately to many educators whose hearty appreciation has strengthened me in my purpose to see this executed.... If the history of our nation may be foreseen by the light which other nations give us, we may know that our influence will last longest through our art.3
Professor Smith believed in the importance of the firsthand study of
Louise Jordan Smith. Self-Portrait. 1897. Pastel on canvas. Bequest of the artist, 1928
art and that art should play a central role within the life of the college. Toward that end, “Miss Louise,” as
she was called, devoted thirty-five
years to a program that included the establishment of an annual exhibition of contemporary art in 1911, the development of an art curriculum that included the introduction of a course
in American paintings and sculpture in 19154, the formation of a permanent collection at Randolph-Macon Woman’s College focused on American painting in 1920, and with her 1928 bequest, the creation of an endowed acquisitions fund to ensure the collection’s growth and to maintain its high quality.5
Professor Smith approached art as an active and integral part of everyday life. That attitude was not only evident in her teaching but also in the exhibitions of European and American paintings, sculpture, and graphic arts that she began organizing at the turn of the century.6
4 As a practicing artist educated in Paris, Smith certainly celebrated what she termed “the art of one’s time,” but she did not neglect the history
of art. She was, in fact, a pioneer in teaching the history of American art decades before it was accepted as worthy of notice at major universities. As early as 1905-1906, Smith specifically included American art in her survey of art history and by 1914-1915 offered a class devoted to it. 1905-1906 R-MWC Catalog, p. 54, and 1914-1915 R-MWC Catalog, p. 72.
5 Ellen M. Schall, “The Liberal Art of Collecting,”
American Art: American Vision, Paintings from a Century of Collecting (Lynchburg and Alexandria: Maier Museum of Art in association with Art Services International, 1990), p. 12.
6 Ibid. p. 14.
William Merritt Chase. Portrait of President William Waugh Smith. 1907.
Oil on canvas. Gift of the Class of 1907
The benefits derived from Professor Smith’s exhibitions and teachings were perhaps best and most sincerely expressed in one student’s art history paper, which was reprinted in the student newspaper, The Sun Dial,
on April 14, 1916. Written as an “appreciation” of a recent loan exhibition from the National Art Club of New York, the paper was published “as indicative of the attitude of the whole student body towards the pictures.”7
The enthusiasm, the admiration, and the inspiration that the student body received from these pictures led many of us to realize as never before the real value of such an exhibition to
an institution of higher learning.... In this age of commercialism we are prone to forget the artistic—that phase of life that influenced so largely the people of ancient times—and an effort should be made to plant and cultivate a taste for genuine art in
the minds of the young people of to- day.... No student should go out as a graduate from any institution who has not ... acquainted herself with the most prominent of our modern painters and their work.8
This deep-felt commitment of both the students and Professor Smith to the idea of directly studying contemporary art manifested itself in several forms. In 1907, the senior class commissioned
2
3
This phrase was used in the singular by Harriet Fitzgerald, R-MWC Class of 1926, to describe Louise Jordan Smith as “a most practical agent of her own dedication which was to art at Randolph- Macon Woman’s College....She never took her hand from the plow.” Harriet Fitzgerald, “The R-MWC Collection of Art: Recollections,” Randolph-Macon Woman’s College Alumnae Bulletin 76 (Spring 1983), p. 9.
Louise Jordan Smith, “Art in Education,”
Proceedings of the Third Annual Capon Springs Conference for Education in the South (Raleigh: St. Augustine’s School, 1900), pp. 48–51.
7 8
Ibid. p. 14.
“Benefits Derived from Art Exhibit,” The Sun Dial vol. II, no. 25, 14 April 1916, p. 1.
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