The recent decision by the University administration to sell the Charles S. Singleton Center at the Villa Spelman, a major European research center, has stunned many in the Hopkins community and beyond.
The sale threatens to undermine Hopkins' intellectual reputation and its esteemed position in the national and international community. Many members of the Hopkins community fear what this action suggests about the current administration's priorities, especially given the recent and much-publicized donation of $100 million for the "Knowledge for the World" campaign.
Protestors set up a petition last Friday to try to save the Villa (http://www.petitiononline.com/spelman). The document currently features over 1,300 signatures, including those of many eminent scholars from around the world.
Among the hundreds of celebrated scholars who have joined the campaign to save the Villa Spelman are Annamaria Petrioli Tofani, former director of the Uffizi Gallery in Florence; Gerhard Wolf, director of the Kunsthistoriches Institut in Florenz, Max Planck Institut, Florence; Giorgio Bonsanti, formerly director and superintendent for all works of art restored in Tuscany, now professor of the History and Technique of Restoration at the University of Florence; Charles Hope, director of the Warburg Institute, London; and Elizabeth Cropper, dean of the Center for Advanced Study in the Visual Arts and former director of the Villa Spelman.
The outcry from scholars beyond Hopkins is a testament to the fundamental importance of the Charles S. Singleton Center in the intellectual life of Florence and for Renaissance Studies worldwide.
The Center brings international renown to Hopkins and showcases Hopkins' research activities. Its celebrated weekly seminars demonstrate Hopkins' commitment to serious intellectual research for a discerning international audience.
The Charles S. Singleton Center was set up over 25 years ago, donated by Mr. and Mrs. Timothy Mather Spelman (members of whose family are among the signatories on the petition). At first the Villa was a venue for graduate study abroad, and more recently it has hosted both graduate and undergraduate programs.
The Villa Spelman has long been associated with prominent scholars in a variety of fields, for decades providing seminars open to the scholarly community in Florence to stimulate an international exchange between well-established scholars and Hopkins graduate students. It has provided thousands of students at Hopkins the opportunity to pursue original research in Italy and to make the first fruits of that research known to their scholarly constituencies. It has provided also a central meeting ground in Florence for scholars of all nationalities.
As a research center whose reputation is tied to its location at the Villa Spelman, it is essential that the Villa itself be saved. Scholars working at the various research institutes in Florence and throughout Europe know to come to the Villa Spelman on Monday nights to attend the stimulating seminars. The administration's proposal of finding an alternative location for the programs currently held at the Villa Spelman would undermine the reputation that Hopkins has established.
The Villa Spelman has provided Hopkins with enviable visibility in Europe, a position that should not be taken lightly or thrown away. Students have flocked to Hopkins knowing that the study of Italian culture would be supported and European students, hearing of the Villa, have pursued degrees at Johns Hopkins. Hopkins graduate students who have spent time at the Villa Spelman have gone on to become faculty and professionals at esteemed universities, research institutes and museums throughout the world. Their success has been buoyed by Hopkins' reputation as a center for Italian studies.
It is deplorable that Hopkins should consider this sale. This decision is grounded in a misguided assumption that the study of European history, art and culture and the humanities in general, does not matter. It assumes that the funds for maintaining such programs are being wasted and should be turned to "more important" fields of study.
This is a clear instance in which the administration has simply not bothered to ascertain the tremendous importance of this institution and of the scholarship and the teaching that it has facilitated. The administration has been swayed by the thought of easy income. The reputation of Hopkins, and, consequently, of its students and faculty, past, present and future, cannot but suffer as a result.
- --Christina Neilson is a Ph.D. candidate in the History of Art department from Sydney, Australia.
