Last Friday marked the opening of the Exhibiting Alice exhibition at the Evergreen Museum and Library, curated by Hopkins senior Margaret Deli as part of an internship opportunity offered for the first time this year.Originally conceived by Evergreen House, the curatorial internship became a reality for students on campus when Hopkins' newly formed Museums and Societies Program agreed to list it for credit. The internship, offering one student $400 and roughly five months to curate a collection for Evergreen, aligned perfectly with the Museums and Societies Program's goal of offering students hands-on experiences and connections with local museums.
And hands-on experience - or perhaps, gloves-on experience - is precisely what Deli got, doing "the things that curators ... in museums generally do," from her first meeting in May until the opening of Exhibiting Alice last Friday.
Deli, who applied for the internship while abroad in Tours, France last spring, was the ideal candidate for what could have been a risky project. According to the Museums and Societies Program's Associate Director Dr. Elizabeth Rodini, Margaret was selected because, aside from "stellar recommendations," she was passionate about the Evergreen House, having worked there as a docent since her sophomore year. Best of all, her application boasted a pre-conceived project, "which indicated that she knew the House and its history and that she saw a creative way of connecting her own interests," Rodini said.
"I knew I wanted it to be on Alice immediately," Deli said of the project. Alice Warder Garrett, the last resident of Evergreen House, was a well-known, passionate patroness of the arts and amateur artist herself. Though Baltimore's Garrett family of the B&O Railroad, already had a reputation for appreciation of the arts - some say it was John Work Garrett who invited a certain Johns Hopkins and George Peabody to dinner to plan the disemination of their fortunes - the addition of Alice to the family in 1908 changed everything.
Described by Deli as "an indomitable woman" with a desire to change the way art was bought and sold, Alice set about creating a haven for artists and a free gallery to welcome the public in Paris, her favorite city among the many she visited while traveling with her husband, a career diplomat. In 1934, Les Amies de l'Art Contemporain, an association to which Alice invited all of her prominent friends, proudly opened their gallery at 20 rue George V in Paris to rave reviews and an endless stream of visitors.
Exhibiting Alice captures both the spirit of that gallery and collection, and of the woman behind it. Deli's curatorial talent is most evident in her skillful combination of not only paintings from the original gallery - with artists such as Segonzac and Chastel among them - but also photographs, letters from artists, newspaper reviews, posters for the gallery's grand opening and even original copies of the association's "Officers and Honorary Committee" and accompanying mailing list.
Deli said of the exhibition, "It is meant not just to show us the art and collection but to discover Alice Garrett herself."
Success, then, was marked in the faces of the 40 or so attendees to Margaret's gallery talk and opening, as they poured over images of the fashionable, unflappably confident Alice, gaining insight into the obsession which has fueled Deli's diligence over the past four months.
Deli described the intensity of the project with enthusiasm. "You get kind of obsessed with it as you go along. One minute you're complaining about Alice Garrett and the next minute you're talking about the guy who works at the DMC about her."
"I would love to have met her. What a tough lady," said Winston Tabb, director of Hopkins' Museums and vice provost for the Arts of Alice Garrett.
Among the challenges faced, Deli counted her $400 budget - generously furnished by Evergreen, though limiting nonetheless - and the nature of Evergreen itself: "It's hard because you're putting pieces into a historic space. You can't take anything out, you can only put things in. It's hard to make it your own."
Ultimately Exhibiting Alice displayed the talents of both Deli and Garrett, and served as a testament to the Museums and Societies Program's emphasis on the importance of students' learning to, as Rodini put it, "work with things, not texts."
Exhibiting Alice will remain on display at the Evergreen Museum & Library through early January, a complement to the upcoming Dufy: The Evergreen Collection exhibition opening Oct. 5. Students are strongly encouraged to visit the museum, which boasts 48 rooms, Tiffany glass and paintings by Modigliani, Degas and Picassso. The museum's curatorial internship program will now be accepting applications on a rolling basis year-round.
