Fig 1. ‘Letter from the President’, The Griffin, May Week 1980. Introduction Prerona Prasad Eleven years after a human set foot on the moon, the first women under- graduates crossed the threshold of Downing College to take their places as full members. Downing’s own ‘one small step for a man’ would take some years to become a leap for humankind as the first three years of the undergraduate intake took about twenty women each year, with men outnumbering them nearly five to one in each round of admissions. The cover of the student magazine, The Griffin, for Easter Term 1980 (the last term before the women arrived) featured a terrified Elizabeth Allen in the vampirical embrace of Bela Lugosi, in a still from the 1935 film Mark of the Vampire, with a banner declaring ‘Girls! Girls! Girls!’ across the bottom right corner (Fig. 1). The only reference in the magazine to the change on the horizon was an assurance that: The visible impact of co-residence on College will be negligible, amounting to a few subtly placed shower curtains and the addition of an extra laundry behind ‘T’ staircase.1 In a previous issue, an anonymous contribution entitled ‘The Advent of Women’ bemoaned the fact that the College bar was now attracting ‘a harvest of women from all over the city’ as a result of mood lighting and artistic additions to the decor. For the author, the main purpose of the bar was: ‘for drinking, not canoodling with women, who, as everyone knows, can rarely get past four or five a night.’2 Anon. goes on to say that, with the Kenny blocks having been turned into ‘Downing’s very own hen coop’ replete with washbasins in every room, the ‘marvellous comradeship’ built on communal ablutions would be lost. In an unexpected act of generosity, our mystery interlocutor concedes that the arrival of women may ‘blow a breath of fresh air through the college’s cobwebs’. The first assessment of the impact of women on Downing came in 1984, in an article by Roz Carrol, who assessed that ‘the earth did not move, the neo-classical face of Downing was not altered beyond recognition…; the status quo was left largely intact,’3 Keen not to downplay the achievements of her recent foremothers, Carrol nonetheless ended her article with the conclusion that ‘Plus ça change…’ It is clear that the last men to experience a single-sex environment at Downing were interested in how the arrival of women would (and had, already) altered the physical spaces in College. The expectation of widespread change was Dr. Prerona Prasad is Exhibitions and Programming Manager at The Heong Gallery and curator of WE ARE HERE. 7 Fig 2. The mummy of ‘Hermione Grammatike’, 1st century AD, Hawara, Egypt. not met in the early years, but the expectation itself indicates nonetheless that shared residential and recreational areas were contested spaces and change of use or users caused some disquiet. Since the lawless days of the early eighties, Downing women have occupied all positions in student government and the Fellowship of the College stands at thirty-four percent female. However, the representation of women on the walls of the College has moved at a glacial pace since 1980: a small series of paintings of College scenes by local artist, Liz Moon, is the only addition in the communal areas, as well as a portrait of Dr Alan Howard and his wife, Grace, in the foyer of the Howard Theatre.4 Why does it matter whether or not there are representations of women and their work in the communal areas of Colleges? College art collections, after all, are made up largely of historical gifts from alumni and donors, alongside commissioned portraits of Heads of House and prominent Fellows. It would follow that collections amassed over hundreds of years would take some time to reflect the modern make-up of members. However, while College art reflects the history of Colleges, its audience consists of current members, for whom Colleges are home for at least twenty-nine weeks every academic year. Learning and living in a space with male-only portraits and artworks is akin to living in a home where photographs of grandfathers, fathers, uncles, brothers, and husbands are the only ones deemed appropriate for display. The arguments against changing the displays of College art in communal spaces range from invoking tradition to citing the cost of buying artworks that are more representative of the College body. For places steeped in centuries of history, it is surprising that some Colleges cling to fairly recent practices like the commemoration of all Heads of House in portrait form in dining halls – only the norm from the second half of the nineteenth century – at a time when others have embraced the challenges of inclusivity in novel ways. Unsurprisingly, some of the earliest examples of women in art at Cambridge Colleges come from historically women’s colleges. Well before the fight for access to degrees was won in 1948, Girton and Newnham were commissioning portraits of their Mistresses and Presidents as well as of prominent Fellows (Pl. 9). Their collections expanded to include works by women artists who supported their cause but who were too old to have been members, such as Christiana Herringham (see pages 27-33) and descendants of benefactors, such artists Winifred Nicholson and Kate Nicholson (Pl. 13, Pl. 14). One particular acquisition, the Roman-era mummy of ‘Hermione Grammatike’ discovered in Hawarra in 1911 by William Flinders Petrie, was acquired for Girton by alumna and benefactor Gwendoline Crewdson (Fig. 2). She felt it was fitting that the only known mummy identified as that of a female teacher (or ‘literary lady’) should come to the College which produced the ‘first senior Classic’. Fourteen years earlier, Girton student Agata Frances Ramsay had created a stir in the Classics fraternity by becoming the only student to 9 Fig. 3 Downing College Dining Hall, ca. 1951. achieve a first class in the Classical Tripos of 1887.5 Crewdson and her supporters wanted to claim a lineage for women scholars that stretched back to Antiquity, with Girton its culmination. Decades before it admitted women undergraduates, King’s College was a locus of creative activities by Bloomsbury women, including Vanessa Bell and Lydia Lopokova (See pp 17-25, Pl. 4). In 1946, the John Maynard Keynes’ art collection came to King’s upon the death of the famous economist. Lopokova was both muse and advisor when it came to the Keynes collection and had been instrumental in the establishment of the Camargo Society (a forerunner of the Royal Ballet) and the Council for the Encouragement of Music and the Arts (later Arts Council).6 King’s was the third men’s College to vote to accept women, after Churchill and Clare, with all three welcoming women undergraduates in 1972. In 1946, the same year that King’s received the Keynes Bequest, Downing College received a portrait of Lady Margaret Downing from her descendant Philip Loyd, Bishop of St Albans. Lady Downing had long been established as villain-in-chief in College lore. First committed to print in 1899, the charge against her was one of refusing to relinquish the estates of Sir George Downing, 3rd Baronet (d. 1749), to executors charged with setting up a College in the former’s name in the event that a ‘Male Heir of the Body’ had not been produced. She not only held on to the properties in her lifetime, but also dissolved immovable assets such as the grand Cambridgeshire pile, Gamlingay Park, and, ultimately, bequeathed the disputed estates to her nephew. Her will is particularly notable for its large gifts of money to female relatives, and her portrait travelled down the female line for three generations.8 The portrait hung in Downing’s dining hall for nearly four decades before being relocated to the relative safety of the Senior Combination Room after it was discovered to be a genuine Gainsborough.9 In the latter years of her presence in the dining hall, she had become the target of food throwing, a feeble act of damnatio memoriae against the formidable nemesis from the College’s past (Fig. 3). An artist who grew up at the fringes of University life was Gwen Raverat, whose childhood memoir Period Piece recalls her life at Newnham Grange, the home purchased by her father George Darwin, Plumian Professor of Astronomy and Experimental Philosophy at the University.10 Raverat’s mother was a member of the Ladies Dining Club, a pro-suffrage group of women, many of whom were members of Newnham College, while others were wives of male Fellows.11 Although known primarily for her wood engravings – she was a founding member of the Society of Wood Engravers - Raverat produced a series of small views of the River Cam after a stroke rendered her incapable of making engravings. Eight of these became part of the collection of Darwin College, established in 1964 in and around Newnham Grange (Pl. 16, Pl. 17). Darwin was the first graduate College established at Cambridge and was also the first founded as a co-educational institution from the start. 11 While art by women entered most men-only College collections incidentally, Churchill College boasted work by artists such as Barbara Hepworth and Bridget Riley from the mid-sixties onwards. Seeking art that would complement the modernist vision of architect Richard Sheppard, the College borrowed monumental bronze sculptures by Henry Moore, Barbara Hepworth, and others.12 At the suggestion of the College’s Curator of Art, the work included in WE ARE HERE is a print by American artist Louise Nevelson made the year that Churchill voted to admit women undergraduates.