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.

This list only begins to suggest what Phelan undertook in addition to her teaching, advising and administrative obligations as both chair of VES and director of the Carpenter Center.

The development of Studio Arts and the full range of her projects could scarcely have been undertaken, much less brought to successful fruition as they have been, had not Phelan devoted herself—with superb administrative competence—full-time and more than full-time (she has maintained a residence in Cambridge since 1995) to her department and to its goal of fostering the making of art by Harvard undergraduates. Such complex and far-reaching projects require willing and sympathetic staff support; in past years VES has been, for the most part, fortunate in having that important resource.

The Crimson’s stance on Phelan’s sudden and startling dismissal as chair leaves many questions unanswered. In any institution, department, or community, there will be difficulties and dissensions; we all have an interest in supporting judicious and informed procedures for addressing such matters. In the absence of any official statement on the matter from the administration, we are disturbed that The Crimson would presume to censure Phelan’s leadership of VES, and we question the basis on which that opinion was formed and on which the administration apparently acted. Given Phelan’s accomplishments and ongoing contributions to Harvard, your suggestion that the “ability of the VES department to implement her vision” was “compromised” is incomprehensible.

We applaud Phelan’s success and that of her VES colleagues in bringing the arts to Harvard with unprecedented imagination and energy, and in creating a context in which undergraduates are taken seriously as makers of art.

Although a scheduled review by the Visiting Committee of VES, which had not been convened in over five years, was cancelled by the administration at the time of Phelan’s removal as chair, we urge the University to give the Visiting Committee the opportunity to evaluate the developments since their last review.

We are deeply concerned for what Phelan’s dismissal may indicate about Harvard’s commitment to programs in the creative arts. The Crimson’s readers, the Harvard community and the broader community of supporters of the arts should express their support for the vision Phelan has brought to VES and to undergraduate education in the arts at Harvard.

Maureen McLane ’89

Yvonne Rainer

Laura M. Slatkin ’68

May 24, 2001

Maureen McLane is a junior fellow of the Society of Fellows. Yvonne Rainer is a visiting lecturer in VES. Laura M. Slatkin is an associate professor of classics at the University of Chicago.

Phelan’s Dismissal Tragic

To the editors:

I don’t know what happened this year in the Carpenter Center. What I do know is that the soul-searching at VES goes back at least as far as the early 70s, when I was a concentrator. Where else would professors gather their sophomores for tutorial and ask them earnestly, “What should we be teaching you?” With the possible exception of a few expository writing classes, no other part of Harvard attempted to teach creative production. The lack of any model whatsoever created an uneasy hybrid between Germanic rigidities and American existential voids.

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.