Art History

The steadily growing interest in women's art should be further stimulated by the new exhibit "Lady Artists in Evidence: Four Chester County Women Artists" at the Chester County Historical Society. Until now, historical societies in our area seem to have left this kind of enterprise to commercial art galleries or small museums. This show is often more interesting as social history than for its esthetic revelations. Indeed, it has to be considered a social documentary about four turn-of-the-century women artists from the same locality, rather than an anthology of their highest achievements.

John Singleton Copley's famous painting Watson and the Shark is grounded in historical fact - a man named Brook Watson was, indeed, attacked by a shark while swimming in Havana harbor. But Copley's dramatic interpretation of the incident as a heroic allegory is as much fiction as fact, which is equally true of Thomas Eakins' masterpiece, The Gross Clinic. In her show at Temple Gallery, Dotty Attie shows us that pictures such as these aren't always what they appear to be. She does it imaginatively and humorously, for while Attie wishes to cut to the bone of art history, she doesn't want the patient to bleed excessively.

The first reaction of people she meets, when she tells them what she does, is "their eyes glaze over," Marina Pacini observes cheerfully. Pacini, a slim, dark-haired woman born in Colombia 35 years ago, is the one-woman band who, for the last five years, has been coordinating the Philadelphia Arts Documentation Project for the Archives of American Art. Since 1954, when the Archives of American Art launched its initial two-year project -...

Ralph Kuncl, a physician and researcher in the field of neuromuscular diseases who also has a background in education, has been named provost of Bryn Mawr College. Kuncl lives in Baltimore, where he is vice provost for undergraduate education at Johns Hopkins University. He will take the post at Bryn Mawr in June, when he will replace Robert Dostal, who plans to return to teaching in the college's philosophy department. Kuncl, the first physician to be named to the position, is also a professor of neurology and pathology at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine.

Intrigued by the expressive way artists have portrayed beautiful women and by the talented geisha entertainers in colorful Japanese woodblock prints, Ginger da Costa decided to try her hand at the ancient art form. An art history professor, da Costa drew on her love of vintage photographs, Asian culture and the classical world to create images of the geisha, dancing and playing the traditional musical instruments, as well as of the goddess Aphrodite, heeding Cupid's advice. Da Costa's work, along with the prints created by her West Chester University colleague Belle Hollon, will be exhibited in a two-person show, Beyond Ukiyo-e: Creative Woodblock Prints, at the Chester County Art Association through Dec. 20. "It was 15 years since I made art," confessed da Costa, who has a doctorate in art history.

Can we all get along? — Rodney King   The remarkable art collection of the late Albert C. Barnes has been moved to a new, more appropriate home within the city that will allow thousands more visitors to see it than could have at its former suburban location. This should be a time of celebration. And yet, some want to continue fighting the civil war over moving the art that finally had to be resolved by the courts. It's hard for the move's opponents to get over what transpired, but it's time for them to work just as hard to see that Dr. Barnes' vision is adhered to as much as possible in his collection's new abode.

Haverford College will wait more than a year to get its first choice for a new leader, Lafayette College president Daniel H. Weiss. The prestigious Main Line liberal arts college on Tuesday announced that Weiss, an art history scholar who has led Lafayette since 2005, would become Haverford's 14th president in July 2013. Weiss, 54, asked for the time to finish his eighth year with Lafayette and oversee projects he had started, including the design and building of a new center for global education and a new arts campus.

While studying city planning at Harvard University, Abraham A. Davidson had difficulty drawing perspectives correctly. In his autobiography on a Temple University website, Dr. Davidson wrote that a Harvard professor discouraged his thoughts of graduate studies in architecture but, he recalled, "I might be allowed to continue in city planning. "I thought city planning was beset by politics, while art history was something 'purer.' "Little did I then realize . . . " Dr. Davidson, 76, of Center City, who retired as an art history professor at Temple University's Tyler School of Art in May after a 43-year career there, died of sepsis Sunday, Dec. 18, at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.

The president of Lafayette College in Easton will become Haverford College's 14th president, but he won't start the job for over a year, Haverford officials announced Tuesday. Dan Weiss, who has been president of Lafayette since 2005, was approved by Haverford's Board of Managers on Saturday, following a national search that began last fall. He starts at the 1,200-student liberal arts college in July 2013, which allows him to complete his eighth year of presidency at Lafayette, Haverford said.

Artist Judith Schaechter's stained-glass windows are lauded throughout the world for their beauty, decorative charm, and edgy take on the darker aspects of the human condition. This month's debut of 17 new pieces at Eastern State Penitentiary is the Philadelphia-based artist's return to the local spotlight with her first solo exhibition here in 10 years. Working with the nonprofit preservation group behind Eastern State Penitentiary, the artist pushed herself to create an ambitious piece in a large archway above a door in Cellblock 11. "The Battle of Carnival and Lent" contains 90 human figures in a complex composition that depicts a mythic battle between good and evil, piety and debauchery, crime and remorse, despair and hope.

Can we all get along? — Rodney King   The remarkable art collection of the late Albert C. Barnes has been moved to a new, more appropriate home within the city that will allow thousands more visitors to see it than could have at its former suburban location. This should be a time of celebration. And yet, some want to continue fighting the civil war over moving the art that finally had to be resolved by the courts. It's hard for the move's opponents to get over what transpired, but it's time for them to work just as hard to see that Dr. Barnes' vision is adhered to as much as possible in his collection's new abode.

Haverford College will wait more than a year to get its first choice for a new leader, Lafayette College president Daniel H. Weiss. The prestigious Main Line liberal arts college on Tuesday announced that Weiss, an art history scholar who has led Lafayette since 2005, would become Haverford's 14th president in July 2013. Weiss, 54, asked for the time to finish his eighth year with Lafayette and oversee projects he had started, including the design and building of a new center for global education and a new arts campus.

The president of Lafayette College in Easton will become Haverford College's 14th president, but he won't start the job for over a year, Haverford officials announced Tuesday. Dan Weiss, who has been president of Lafayette since 2005, was approved by Haverford's Board of Managers on Saturday, following a national search that began last fall. He starts at the 1,200-student liberal arts college in July 2013, which allows him to complete his eighth year of presidency at Lafayette, Haverford said.

Artist Judith Schaechter's stained-glass windows are lauded throughout the world for their beauty, decorative charm, and edgy take on the darker aspects of the human condition. This month's debut of 17 new pieces at Eastern State Penitentiary is the Philadelphia-based artist's return to the local spotlight with her first solo exhibition here in 10 years. Working with the nonprofit preservation group behind Eastern State Penitentiary, the artist pushed herself to create an ambitious piece in a large archway above a door in Cellblock 11. "The Battle of Carnival and Lent" contains 90 human figures in a complex composition that depicts a mythic battle between good and evil, piety and debauchery, crime and remorse, despair and hope.

Lisa Tremper Hanover, longtime director of the Philip and Muriel Berman Museum of Art at Ursinus College, has been named director and chief executive of the Michener Art Museum in Doylestown, the Michener's board of directors announced Tuesday. She will succeed Bruce Katsiff, who has headed the Michener since 1989. Katsiff said last year that he would retire in 2012 and devote himself to photography. Hanover, 55, has been the Berman's director for 25 years and also serves as an adjunct professor of fine arts at Ursinus, located in Collegeville, Montgomery County.

Francis X. Gildea, 69, formerly of Radnor, a Vietnam War veteran and shopping mall manager, died Saturday, March 10, of complications from cancer at Waverly Heights, a retirement community in Gladwyne. A native of Lackawanna County, Mr. Gildea graduated from Scranton Preparatory School and earned a bachelor's degree from the University of Scranton. From 1966 to 1968, he served in the Army and completed a tour of duty, including jungle operations in Vietnam. After his discharge, he was an analyst for the National Security Agency in Washington, where he met his future wife, Joyce Asher.

WASHINGTON - President Obama led a parade of dignitaries at a festive groundbreaking for the Smithsonian's Museum of African American History and Culture on Wednesday morning. Many expressed hopes that it could be a vehicle for understanding and healing on the still-fraught subject of race. The museum, generations in the making, will "ponder the pain of slavery and segregation" but also "soar on the resiliency of a people," said Lonnie Bunch III, its founding director. It will use "African American culture as a lens to more clearly understand what it means to be an American.

While studying city planning at Harvard University, Abraham A. Davidson had difficulty drawing perspectives correctly. In his autobiography on a Temple University website, Dr. Davidson wrote that a Harvard professor discouraged his thoughts of graduate studies in architecture but, he recalled, "I might be allowed to continue in city planning. "I thought city planning was beset by politics, while art history was something 'purer.' "Little did I then realize . . . " Dr. Davidson, 76, of Center City, who retired as an art history professor at Temple University's Tyler School of Art in May after a 43-year career there, died of sepsis Sunday, Dec. 18, at Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.

NESSA R. FORMAN had such drive that she could take hold of the editors of the often stodgy old Evening Bulletin and give them a good shake. "When she covered the art scene for the Bulletin, she was a reporter with the same intensity expected of the police and political beats," said Don Harrison, an editor at the Bulletin and the Daily News. "With guts and tenacity, she dug out real news where it was often ignored, then 'sold' it to skeptical editors. " She carried that same passion to get the job done right when she joined WHYY after the Bulletin closed in 1982, and retired in 2007 as vice president of corporate communications and public affairs.

In the late 1960s, Nessa Forman would show up at 7 a.m. in the composing room of the Evening Bulletin, the only woman there. As the first-edition deadline neared, she directed the men who moved columns of metal type into the forms that produced that day's feature pages. Though not long out of graduate school, Ms. Forman was already respected. On Saturday night, Ms. Forman, 68, vice president of corporate communications and public affairs at WHYY Inc. from February 1983 to July 2007 and arts and leisure editor of the Bulletin when it closed in January 1982, died of pancreatic cancer at Penn Hospice at Rittenhouse.