Volume 12, Number 3, 2004
Janis Tomlinson, the new director of University of Delaware Museums, seems surrounded by good news as she sits at her desk in the newly renovated Mechanical Hall. Downstairs, pieces from the extensive Paul R. Jones Collection of African-American art have begun arriving. Upstairs, on her desk, sits a list of 19 works just donated by Margaret Litt of Philadelphia.
The Litt Collection includes an architectural sketch by Frank Lloyd Wright, rare trial proofs by Odilon Redon, an early Grant Wood oil, two Andrew Wyeth drawings, an etching by Edouard Manet, a Rembrandt etching, a Currier and Ives lithograph, a hand-colored Audubon engraving and other works.
Tomlinson, a nationally known art historian, has shared her goal of expanding the University art collection to make it representative of art history through the ages, and faculty and alumni already are responding to her vision. One faculty member is in the midst of arranging the donation of a major drawing.
"With the opening of Mechanical Hall in September 2004, the visual arts will have more of a presence on the University campus, providing an incentive to build our collections, which are already well-used by the faculty and students," Tomlinson says. "Art given to the University of Delaware is seen in exhibitions, but it also is used by the faculty and by classes. In this sense, it benefits perhaps more people than it would if it were in a museum where it is exhibited for a period and then goes into storage."
The art stored at the University Gallery goes back into circulation frequently as professors use it in their classes, especially in art history, anthropology, art conservation, history, museum studies and studio art.
"This collection is an extremely important resource. I think there's really great potential," Tomlinson says. "Everyone I've spoken to is very enthusiastic about the future of visual arts here."
Tomlinson, who earned a doctoral degree in art history from the University of Pennsylvania, was an associate professor of art and archaeology at Columbia University before she became director of exhibitions and cultural programs at the National Academy of Sciences in Washington, D.C. She took over her newly created post at UD last September.
Tomlinson is internationally known for the work she has done on the art of Francisco Goya and on other topics in Spanish painting. She was a guest curator of the exhibition Goya: Images of Women at the National Gallery of Art in 2002.
She has been a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a John Simon Guggenheim Fellow and the Clark Professor of Art History at Williams College. She also has earned a certificate of business administration from the Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania and a certificate in nonprofit management from George Mason University.
Ann L. Ardis, associate dean of the College, says Tomlinson has the professional background needed to create a University-level structure that will take best advantage of such assets as the Paul R. Jones Collection, the University Gallery holdings and the Irénée du Pont Collection of minerals and geologic objects.
"In this kind of an institution, where we have really extensive faculty strength in the arts, it's important for the person directing the art collections to have faculty experience of her own," Ardis says.
Tomlinson also works closely with the faculty and staff in the University's museum training and art conservation programs, such as the Winterthur Program in Early American Culture, the Hagley Program in Industrial History and the Winterthur/University of Delaware Program in Art Conservation.
Tomlinson says her first priority in her new post is moving the Jones Collection into its new home and preparing for Mechanical Hall's fall opening. With the Jones Collection in place, she says, she expects the University to become a major center for the study of African-American art.
--Kathy Canavan