The Unsung Associate Director Recently, We Have Been
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The Muse Newsletter of the Slater Memorial Museum Spring 2011 The Unsung Associate Director Recently, we have been recognizing the High School. She then came to the Norwich remarkable professionals who came before us Art School for three years as a post-graduate, in leading both the Slater Memorial Museum scholarship student. Her scholarship covered and its spawn, the Norwich Art School. While the $35 needed to pay the tuition. While in the staff of the Slater Museum has been, the art school, she volunteered at the Slater as traditionally, lean, from time to time, through an assistant to then director, Hannah Dodge special funding or reconfiguring positions, and served as an instructor in the renowned there has been an assistant or associate Saturday Morning Children’s Art Class from director. Such was the case with Dorothy 1933 to 1934. Tredennick of Berea, Kentucky, who died at the age of 96 on February 9, 2011. As the depression showed its full force, the Works Progress Administration took effect Dorothy Tredennick was born in 1914 in and Dorothy’s position as Associate Director Bristol, Connecticut, where she graduated from became a paid staff assignment as part of the Connecticut State Department of Education, Department of Loan Exhibitions. In this capacity, from 1934 to 1939, she developed traveling exhibitions from the museum’s holdings to go into NFA classrooms as well as to those in the rural and urban elementary schools in the surrounding towns. Ms. Tredennick also catalogued the Asian art of the Emily Vanderpoel collection, creating a hand guide that was reproduced in the Academy Press, then an artisanal program of NFA dedicated to the craft of fine printing. Emily Noyes Vanderpoel (1842-1939) was Dorothy Tredennick (Continued on page 3) A Message from the Director Ah!, Spring, at long last. While I know it’s dangerous to enjoy too much the current season, especially in New England, it’s a joy nonetheless to know that any snow now couldn’t last long on the ground. Nor could it slow construction on the Slater Museum’s grand project. In fact, those in charge of our Accessibility Atrium project tell me that whatever time was lost due to “winter conditions” will be recovered from now to completion this fall. Among the items to be checked off the list, is our new office suite on the “Upper Mezzanine.” Finally, the banging, crashing and dust is below us as the crew demolishes our old offices to accommodate our new visitors’ center. It is in this roughly 800 square foot space that visitors will enter, whether from the new Atrium or via the old original stairs, and pay admission. In addition, and very exciting, the space will house our new museum shop sponsored by the Friends of Slater through a vote by its board of Directors. In another encouraging action by the Friends board, they voted to sponsor the re-finishing of the wooden Cast Gallery floor. Thank you to the Board and all you generous members who have remained faithful during our “transition” period! UPCOMING EXHIBITIONS, PROGRAMS AND EVENTS Sunday, April 10, 2011 Friends of Slater Museum Annual Brunch. Presentation 11:00 am on new exhibits at the museum to open in the Fall. Please call 860-425-5561 for reservation information. Sunday, May 1, 2011 Opening of the Lincoln Portrait Project at the Norwich 2:00 pm - 4:00 pm Arts Center, Norwich, Connecticut. More information will be posted at www.norwicharts.org. The Muse is published up to four times yearly for the members of The Friends of the Slater Memorial Museum. The museum is located at 108 Crescent Street, Norwich, CT 06360. It is part of The Norwich Free Academy, 305 Broadway, Norwich, CT 06360. Museum main telephone number: (860) 887-2506. Visit us on the web at www.slatermuseum.org. Museum Director – Vivian F. Zoë Newsletter editor – Geoff Serra Contributing authors: Vivian Zoë, Leigh Thomas and Patricia Flahive Photographers: Leigh Thomas, Vivian Zoë The president of the Friends of the Slater Memorial Museum: Patricia Flahive The Norwich Free Academy Board of Trustees: Steven L. Bokoff ’72, Jeremy D. Booty ‘74 Glenn T. Carberry Richard DesRoches * Lee-Ann Gomes ‘82, Treasurer Thomas M. Griffin ‘70, Secretary Thomas Hammond ‘75 Theodore N. Phillips ’74 Vice Chair Robert A. Staley ’68 David A. Whitehead ’78, Chair Sarette Williams ‘78 *Museum collections committee The Norwich Free Academy does not discriminate in its educational programs, services or employment on the basis of race, religion, gender, national origin, color, handicapping condition, age, marital status or sexual orientation. This is in accordance with Title VI, Title VII, Title IX and other civil rights or discrimination issues; Section 504 of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973 as amended and the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1991. 2 (Continued from page 1) of fine Asian ceramics, textiles and fine art has increased the value of her collection to the Slater Museum, both intrinsically and extrinsically. Mrs. Vanderpoel donated the collection a few years before her death, when Mrs. Dodge was hitting her stride as director and curator and when the eager and brilliant Dorothy Tredennick would have been at the Slater to assist. To have been entrusted with the assignment Mrs. Vanderpoel’s former residence, the historic of creating the Vanderpoel catalogue is a Tallmadge House in Litchfield. reflection of the recognition by Mrs. Dodge born Emily Caroline Noyes in New York of Dorothy’s intellect, talent and promise. City on June 21, 1842. She married John The Slater Museum still has copies of Aaron Vanderpoel on May 22, 1865. As a the catalogue, as well as numerous other resident of Litchfield, Connecticut, she was materials printed by the Academy Press. an active member and first curator of the Mrs. Dodge’s predecessor, Henry Watson Litchfield Historical Society and a member Kent, a bibliophile, had many invitations of the Daughters of the American Revolution. and exhibition brochures reproduced by the She was an author and painter. Included in Academy Press, the quality of which was her writing was a two-volume history of the always the highest. Litchfield Female Academy, Chronicles of a Pioneer School and More Chronicles of a Arriving as a non traditional student at Berea Pioneer School. Mrs. Vanderpoel died at the College in 1943, Ms. Tredennick initially age of 96 on Feb. 20, 1939 and is buried in studied history and political science. After East Cemetery in Litchfield. graduating in 1946, she obtained a Masters in Art from the University of Michigan with Mrs. Dodge had strong similarities to Emily a specialization in Asian Art History. She Vanderpoel. They both moved from the large and cosmopolitan city of their birth to Connecticut as young married women. Their strong intellects led them into scholarly and academic pursuits. According to institutional mythology, Mrs. Vanderpoel had first offered her vast collection of “Oriental Art”, as it was then known to the Brooklyn Museum (and perhaps other New York City museums). At that time, when golden age of sail and the ubiquity among the wealthy of the Grand Tour were coming to a close, collections like Mrs. Vanderpoel’s were not so rare. Although the collection may have been viewed at that time by the major institutions as somewhat below their standards or duplicative, the passage Hand-painted porcelain plate made at Kutani, c. of time and lessening of the personal import 1840. From the Vanderpoel Collection of Asian Art at the Slater Museum. 3 those expelled lived in Cincinnati or nearby northern towns for several years, returning permanently after the war. Starting in 1864, during the Civil War, John Fee applied his energies to improving conditions for former slaves who had volunteered for the Union Army at Camp nelson. Beginning with preaching, he soon saw that there were pressing needs for them and their families. The first Berea College building Fee helped arrange construction of facilities to support them and their families at the returned to Berea in 1954 to teach art, but camp, including housing, a hospital, church her courses retained a historical and political and school. After the war, African-American emphasis. families came to Berea to take part in its education and interracial vision. For years it A professor at Berea College for 41 years, included instruction in preparatory grades for she was known for her work as an art college. historian, an inspiring teacher and her life- long commitment to peace and justice. She In the 1890s, as part of a general heritage received her bachelor’s degree from Berea movement in the US, there was a growing College in 1946 and her master’s degree national interest in the culture and traditions from the University of Michigan in 1951. of Appalachia by writers, academics, missionaries, and teachers. A renewed interest In 1850 the area now known as Berea was in traditional crafts was in part a reaction to called the Glade, a community of scattered continuing urbanization and industrialization. farms with a racetrack and citizens sympathetic Fascinated by the rich culture of Appalachia to emancipation. In 1853, rich and politically and dismayed by the region’s isolation and ambitious Cassius Marcellus Clay gave Reverend John Gregg Fee a free tract of land in the Glade. With local supporters and other abolitionist missionaries from the American Missionary Association, Fee established two churches (First Christian Church and Union Church), a tiny village and Berea College. Fee named Berea after a biblical town (today known as Veria) where the people “received the Word with all readiness of mind.” Founded in 1855, Berea College was the only integrated and coeducational college in the South for nearly forty years, modeled it on Oberlin College in Ohio, and hoped it would become an academic beacon of the North.