The International Classroom of the University of Pennsylvania Museum provided two artist-presenters to the Annual Art Night celebration of Chews Elementary School in Gloucester Township, New Jersey. Artist Yinka Natty Adeyemo of Nigeria demonstrated traditional drumming, and Jingxiang Liang of China shared his expertise in Chinese ink and watercolor painting with the 3000 participants who attended the event. International Classroom arranges for international students and residents of Philadelphia to give presentations about their countries and cultures in a variety of venues, like this one, to provide multicultural educational opportunities. International Classroom currently involves 180 speakers from more than 60 countries.
SARA SENIOR (below) was presented by Dr. Jeremy A. Sabloff on May 5,1999, with the Angell Medal. Named in honor of Marian Angell Godfrey Boyer (1892-1989), a long-time supporter of the Museum, the medal was established in 1986 to recognize distinguished service to the Museum. Mrs. Senior is the sixth recipient of the medal. Chairman of the Museum’s Board of Overseers since 1997, she has been an active member of the Board for sixteen years.
In 1952 the University Museum mounted an exhibit entitled “Fourteen Eyes in a Museum Storeroom,” which put on display objects selected by representatives of the entertainment and museum worlds. The WOMEN’S COMMITTEE of the Museum is today repeating that exhibit’s popular format by inviting artists, actors, designers, and other notable cultural figures to search the storerooms and select personal favorites from the shelves and drawers. The exhibit of the selections—which may have to be called “Forty-four Eyes…” due to the enthusiastic response of those invited to participate—will open in April of 2000. It will coincide with the groundbreaking for the proposed new East Wing of the Museum.
The “Fourteen Eyes” that picked pieces in 1952 included: Charles Addams, cartoonist, New Yorker Magazine; Norman Bel Geddes, stage and industrial designer; Rene d’Harnoncourt, director, Museum of Modern Art, New York; Lincoln Kirstein, director, New York City Ballet; Jacques Lipchitz, sculptor; Louis E. Stern, collector; Franklin C. Watkins, painter.
Charles Addams remarked with characteristic ghoul on one of his choices, a bird from Sepik River, New Guinea: “I chose this because some islanders, out of extreme boredom, went to the trouble to construct it. Besides, desiccated birds happen to appeal to me.”
Some of the more than “Fourteen Eyes” that are picking pieces for the exhibit slated to open in 2000: Ralph Archbold, Benjamin Franklin impersonator; Edmund Bacon, urban planner; Kevin Bacon, actor; Robert Ballard, oceanographer; Philip Glass, composer; Anne d’Harnoncourt, director, Philadelphia Museum of Art; Zahi Hawass, undersecretary for the Giza monuments, Egypt; Yo-Yo Ma, cellist; Mary McFadden, designer; Harold Prince, producer/ director; Robert A. K. Runcie, Archbishop of Canterbury, England; Denise Scott Brown and Robert Venturi, architects; Princess Sirindhorn of Thailand.