Phelan’s Success in VES Left Out of Story

To the editors:

We write in collaboration with 24 individuals, including Harvard senior faculty, artists and members of the wider art community, in response to your editorial on the administration’s treatment of Ellen Phelan in her role as chair of the Visual and Environmental Studies (VES) department and director of the Carpenter Center (“Changing Function, Not Face,” May 16).

In 1993, the Buell report to the administration on the conditions of the study and practice of the visual arts at Harvard drew attention to the severe deficiencies in the programs at VES and in particular to the programs in the studio arts. With the goal of remedying these insufficiencies, an extensive nationwide search concluded with the recruitment of Phelan in 1995.

Since her arrival, Phelan has transformed VES from the “parochial,” insular, and (at best) peripheral element in the University it was at the time of the report to what is now nationally recognized as an exceptional, vibrant hub of artistic and intellectual activity centered on undergraduates and committed to their needs.

Phelan’s first commitment, shared with her colleagues in VES, was to a rigorous overhaul of the curriculum; the number of courses offered in studio arts has doubled, and their quality and programmatic coherence have improved dramatically. Class size has been reduced, more courses than ever have been cross-listed, more faculty have been jointly appointed with other departments, the number of Hoopes prizes awarded to VES students has greatly increased and this Spring a record number of undergraduates, more than 40, applied for VES concentration. VES graduates are now accepted to the foremost graduate programs in this country and abroad, including Yale, Columbia, Cal Arts, Goldsmiths College and London. All this bespeaks a flourishing work atmosphere of care, inclusiveness and mutual respect between students and faculty.

By any measure, what Phelan has achieved within five years is astonishing: her accomplishments include integrating studio arts courses with offerings in photography, film, video, animation, history, theory and criticism; overseeing the visiting appointments of as many as 20 internationally renowned artists and critics each year as faculty in undergraduate courses; creating one of the country’s preeminent lecture series in the visual arts, aimed at undergraduate interests and open to the entire community; organizing all Carpenter Center exhibitions since 1996; coordinating projects with the Fogg museum and its director, James Cuno, to make available more studio, seminar, and shared exhibition space; and fundraising annually for visiting faculty salaries, for speakers’ honoraria, for events at the Carpenter Center and for the Harvard Film Archive, bringing in well over $1 million since 1995.