Last week, a painting hanging in the Red Room was damaged. The room is widely accessible, and my own hunch is that students were not involved: The damage seems too serious, and too angry to be a prank. But I believe that students and other readers of this paper — faculty, staff, alumni and community members — deserve the opportunity to learn about this event, and to discuss its implications for our campus and for the culture of trust and respect inherent in the liberal arts education.
The damaged painting is a portrait of Charles Woolsey Cole, Class of 1927, an economic historian who became the 12th President of Amherst in 1946. Cole steered the College through a period of growth and change, from the years following the Second World War to the beginning of the Civil Rights era. During Cole’s presidency, which concluded in 1960, the college introduced a core curriculum, expanded its facilities, became a national leader in the racial integration of its fraternities and enlarged its endowment. In the damaged half-length portrait, New York-based painter Everett Raymond Kinstler captured Cole’s still-boyish face as it appeared in 1962, when the former Amherst President served as U.S. Ambassador to Chile in the Kennedy administration. Delta Kappa Epsilon alumni donated the portrait in 1999, when the Red Room was renovated and renamed Cole Assembly Room in the 12th President’s honor.
The recent vandalism is unsettling on many levels. Most obviously, it attests to the presence of crime in a seemingly sacrosanct campus space. It also demonstrates a failure to care for a work of art donated to our community with the understanding that it would be preserved and passed down to future generations. It requires art conservation services which the museum cannot easily afford. It implies a lack of respect for President Cole. And perhaps most troubling of all, it suggests that acts of violence — rather than discussion, published critique or political action — constitute a viable form of expression on our campus. If, like me, you believe that we can only shape Amherst’s future by understanding its history, and by confronting that legacy on intellectual terms, then I hope that you will lend your voice to the many informal conversations on the subject that take place on our campus every day, and that you will consider participating in our public conversation this week.
-Elizabeth E. Barker
Director and Chief Curator
Mead Art Museum