When Charlotte Eyerman was preparing for her job in the Department of Visual Arts, she looked into arts opportunities for her students near Union and discovered the Hyde Collection.
The I Hyde Collection is a small art museum in Glens Falls, N.Y., an hour north
of Schenectady. Founded by Charlotte Pruyn Hyde in 1952, the museum comprises the Hyde's home (an Italian Renaissance-styled villa) and their private collection, which includes works by Botticelli, da Vinci, Rubens, Degas, Renoir, Rembrandt, Cezanne, van Gogh, Picasso, Eakins, Homer, and Whistler, among many others.
Eyerman, the John D. MacArthur assistant professor of visual arts, has helped establish a relationship with the Hyde that has let five Union students intern in the museum and experience art first-hand. The students spend one or two days a week at the Hyde working with Randall Suffolk, curator; Tamara Zaroff, education coordinator; or Robin Blakney-Carlson, collections manager. Each keeps a journal and writes a paper analyzing the experience at the end of the internship.
Eyerman says that because art history is the study of a visual tradition that spans
a great many centuries,
the best way to learn about artists and art is to directly be in a museum.
“In art history we study slides and, though we can learn a lot about history
and culture and context and artists' lives, you really only
learn how to see when you encounter an object and engage that object in person,” she says. “In my discipline, the art object is the primary source. It has the same kind of empirical weight or importance as does working in a lab for a scientist.”
The Hyde interns are serious art students, Eyerman says, and want to make
the most of their education outside the classroom.
“While we feel that we do a good job of furnishing them with history, context, a critical vocabulary, and ways to understand and interpret works of art, looking at a slide pales in comparison to encountering something directly,” she says. “We really emphasize expanding your mind, expanding your
horizon literally and figuratively.”
The Hyde gets a lot in return, says Zaroff. “We rely on interns because we're mostly one-person departments. Having motivated, intelligent individuals who can take on not just clerical work but a project with some substance in it is crucial to our day-to-day functioning.” We talked with three students about their internships, and here are their experiences.
For Nina Cohen '97,
an arts major with a concentration in art history, her internship added museum work to an already impressive list of work experiences.
Cohen, who hopes to find work in a museum or gallery, says that she wasn't even sure what art history was until she came to Union.
“At first, like the typical student, I changed my major often,” she says. In her sophomore year, she took Introduction to Art History II with Prof. Eyerman, and she knew that she wanted to be an arts major.
Eyerman encouraged her to look into working in a gallery, and for two summers Cohen interned at the Peter Joseph Gallery in New York City, receiving academic credit. Involved in archival work and public relations, Cohen had her first glimpse of the real work of art historians. “That internship spurred my interest in the arts,” she says. “I was already an arts major, but it got
me interested in galleries and museums.”
Last summer, she was at the Leo Castelli Gallery in New York City, working exclusively in the archives department. When she returned to Union in the fall, she knew she wanted a different work experience. “I enjoyed my internships at the galleries, but I wanted to be someplace where people were looking at art that was going to be there forever, not art that was waiting to be sold,” she says. “I thought it would help me to make
a decision for the future whether I want to work in a museum or a gallery.”
That's when Eyerman directed her to the Hyde Collection, where Cohen spent each Tuesday and Thursday with Tamara Zaroff, education coordinator. She and Zaroff worked on the Regional Juried High School Art Exhibition, an annual exhibition featuring the work of area students, and organized a general tour for elementary students who visit the museum, encouraging them to really look at art.
Cohen loved her time at the Hyde, especially working in education and the preparation of the general tour for elementary students. “It's always bothered me that I didn't know what art history was when I was young,” she says. “Why can a child tell you that the Mona Lisa was on `Tom and Jerry' but not know what the Mona Lisa is? I think that it's really important that kids be in museums learning about art.”
Working on the student tour, Cohen was challenged to make art interesting and fun for children.
“It is hard because I have all this information swirling through my head-artist dates, styles,
techniques and to go back to `They used a lot of red in this painting' is difficult,” she says.
Immersed in her projects, Cohen says she easily forgot about the startling quality of the artwork around her. Then one day she came upon staff members contemplating the loan of a painting by Ingres to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. “I didn't think that you could even touch an Ingres, and they were holding it in their hands,” she says. “This internship is clearly hands on. You learn what it's like to literally touch art, not just look at a projected image.”
Jennifer Cohen '97 grew up loving to visit the many museums in New York City, so it's not surprising that her love of art developed into studying art history and spending time at the Hyde Collection.
As her fascination with art history grew, she became interested in interning at the Hyde Collection, which she had visited with a friend. “I loved the setting-that it was in a house, something so different from a regular museum setting,” she says. And she was impressed by the quality and variety of the collection.
With Prof. Charlotte Eyerman's help, Cohen arranged an internship with Robin Blakney-Carlson, the collections manager. “I really wanted a hands-on opportunity, and working in special collections allowed me to get right in there,” she says. Cohen helped Blakney
Carlson with several projects and took responsibility for a project organizing
un-cataloged artwork. Careful not to touch any of the pieces, she searched through several boxes in the storage room and categorized each work as a drawing, lithograph, or print. “What amazed me is that some of the artists were familiar to me,” she says.
Because the Hyde is such a small museum, Cohen was able to spend time with nearly every member of the staff, learning the various roles in the functioning of the museum. After completing her Hyde internship, Cohen looked for more ways to add to her experiences in the art world. One summer, she interned at Sotheby's, working with appraisal experts in the impressionist and modern art department. Over winter break of her senior year, Cohen interned with the photo editor at
Art in America magazine, reading manuscripts, writing captions, and corresponding with artists.
“The internships reflect related but very different aspects of art,” she says. “The museum is about preserving art, the auction house is about selling art as a commodity, and the magazine is writing about art.”
Cohen plans to find work in advertising, but she stresses that the writing, research, and people skills that she gained in her internships are important in a successful career in advertising- and almost
any job.
And what about art?
“It's always been part of my life,” she says. “When I came to college I had no idea that I'd major in arts, and even if I don't use art history directly in my career, it's something I'll always do.”
Jack Howard-Potter '97 is a sculptor who has been greatly influenced by studying art history and completing internships in galleries and museums.
When he arrived at Union, Howard-Potter concentrated on studio art classes, but he then took an art history class that changed his opinion about the importance of art history.
“That class made me realize how important it is to have a basis in history when you are making art,” he says. “I gained great respect for the history of art, and I use that a lot more in my creations than I did when I first came to Union.” For example,
he recently noticed a stone figure from the first century in an art history book and mimicked that figure in a life-size steel sculpture for his senior project.
Howard-Potter learned the advanced techniques of welding from Marsha Pels, an artist who spent a year at Union as a visiting professor. The summer after his sophomore year, Howard-Potter interned with Pels in her studio in Brooklyn and helped to install `Terranova' at the Sculpture Center in Manhattan. `Terranova', which featured a neon umbilical cord connecting two glass babies resting
on marble pillows beneath a sky of translucent Fiberglas umbrellas, gave Howard-Potter the opportunity to work with new materials.
Working with Pels was “radically different” from anything he had seen, and he made many contacts
in the art world, one of which turned into another internship the following year. During his junior year, he spent a term in New York City on an internship
sponsored by the Great Lakes College Association, working with Marion Griffiths, director at the Sculpture Center in Manhattan, and Heidi Fasnacht, a former professor at Harvard and an artist.
Fasnacht sculpted with polyester rubber, and Howard-Potter loved working with a sculptor he describes as “really trying to push the bounds.” He helped her sculpt “amorphous forms that looked biological-like caterpillars and green peas.” With Griffiths, he was able to see the business side of art, which he says he enjoyed and “had a knack for.”
In the spring of 1996, he began an internship at the Hyde Collection with Randall Suffolk, the curator. He had a chance to help Rebecca Smith, an artist and daughter of his idol, sculptor David Smith, with the installation of a piece she donated to the Hyde. “But I can't wait until it's my pickup truck and I put my sculpture in the gallery,” he says.
Howard-Potter says his internships have prepared him for a career as an artist. “Without them, I'd be a lot worse off in terms of being prepared to leave college and be able to do what I want to do-to become an artist and get works in galleries,” he says.
Now, with the skills gained from his internships and
all that he has learned in Union's studios, Howard-Potter is busy creating art. “The things that I'm making are like nothing I've ever done. And they're coming out great. I couldn't be happier,” he says.