But when Ellen Phelan, an accomplished artist, ventured to take on VES and bring it into the public sphere, amazing things happened. Suddenly, as a historian of contemporary art, I became aware that exciting things were happening over at Harvard—artists I wanted to hear from were brought to town; panels and symposia were held; exhibitions were mounted; issues were addressed.
Increasingly, there were events to announce to my own students and reasons to go on the pilgrimage over to Quincy Street. It became possible for undergraduates to see what contemporary art is all about: practice and theory, doing and talking, seeing and saying, matter and discourse.
Whatever happened at the Carpenter Center, it surely counts as a disaster and a catastrophe. The students at Harvard as well as the wider community deserve a rational explanation (not to mention a Visiting Committee report) of this inexplicable failure of what seemed such a manifest success.
Caroline A. Jones ’76
Boston, Mass.
May 24, 2001
The writer is an associate professor of art history at Boston University.