When former Chair of the Department of Visual and Environmental Studies (VES) Ellen Phelan walked into a meeting with Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles on March 15th, she says she hoped to gain Knowles’ approval for two new faculty appointments.

But when she left University Hall an hour later, Phelan had been asked to resign as chair.

She refused, and three weeks later, Knowles forcibly removed her and appointed Kenan Professor of English Marjorie Garber—who is not a member of VES and has no formal background in the arts—to the position.

Phelan’s dismissal came after a myriad of informal complaints to FAS Personnel services from the VES department’s support staff, who say that some faculty called students and staff obscene names, hired them to run personal chores and errands, and publicly criticized them for their perceived personal and professional failings, which they say one faculty member meticulously recorded. Phelan, who lives in New York City and was only at VES’ Carpenter Center a few days a week, was criticized for her absenteeism and dismissive administrative style.

The department has had a long history of administrative troubles that compromised its programs and made other parts of FAS work overtime—for the past three years, the VES department has missed the registrar’s deadline for course catalogue listings.

Knowles told The Crimson that over the past year, VES had suffered from “a number of troubling problems.”

Phelan says that Knowles’ action was taken without any formal investigation of the complaints and says she is considering filing a lawsuit.

Puritanical New England Meets Hip New York

When Phelan, a prominent New York City painter, first came to Harvard, it was with a mandate. She was charged with bringing top artists to Harvard to teach undergraduates to make art as well as study it, a strategy that by all accounts has been wildly successful.

But when Phelan brought professional art to Harvard, she brought the culture of the art world with it.

“It was puritanical New England meets hip New York,” said Arnheim Lecturer on Studio Arts Nancy M. Mitchnick.

Phelan says she recruited famous career artists, who painted alone and often paid studio assistants to do everything from wash brushes to manage their archives. Their world bore little resemblance to either academic departments with rigid hierarchies and formal procedures or corporate environments that stress professional boundaries.

Faculty say that Garber, reputed to be a deft administrator and a trusty lieutenant to University Hall, is making VES look and run more like other departments. But some fear that this may freeze the rapidly developing program in its tracks.

They Didn’t Know it was Wrong

The staff complaints that directly led to Phelan’s removal centered on three of eight faculty members who have offices in the Carpenter Center: Phelan, VES Professor and former department chair Chris Killip, and former Head Tutor Mitchnick.