UpDate - Vol. 12, No. 7, Page 8                                
October 15, 1992                                               
Graduate fellow has intense interest in American art           
                                                               
     A junior year spent in Spain while attending Bryn Mawr College  
was pivotal for graduate fellow Maureen McKenna, fostering an intense
interest in art history and launching a career in museum work.       
     McKenna, now a doctoral student in art history at Delaware,     
recalls her first art appreciation course, taken in Madrid, which    
focused on Spanish art and architecture, using the Prado, the city's 
famed art museum, as its classroom.                                  
     Just as influential and exciting, she said, was a studio art    
course in which  she was enrolled that year. Using different media,  
she learned by doing, gaining insight into how artists work, their   
techniques as well as an appreciation for their art. Sketching in    
cafes and outdoors was fun and gave her an artist's view of Madrid.  
     Upon graduation, McKenna worked for an advertising agency in New
York for a year before pursuing  her studies in art history. She     
received her master's degree from Tulane University, studying art    
history and writing her thesis on Emil Armin, a Chicago artist whose 
specialty was American scenes.                                       
     With a Rockefeller Foundation fellowship in museum education,      
McKenna next worked at the Dallas Museum of Art,where she was exposed
to the nuts and bolts of museum work-training docents, setting up    
lectures and assembling material for exhibitions.                    
     From Texas, McKenna headed north to the Illinois State Museum in
Springfield. The museum combined natural history and the fine arts,  
providing opportunities to work with curators in other disciplines.  
The Illinois State Museum focuses on all kinds of art from the state,
from paintings and photography to crafts, sculpture and the decorative        
arts. During her seven years there, McKenna was in the thick of      
things, doing everything from hanging shows to carrying out research 
and designing brochures and catalogs.                                
     Her next assignment took her back to the Dallas Museum of Art to
an organization which was emerging as an active force in the cultural
life of the city. As assistant chief curator, she worked with the    
chief curator/deputy director of the museum in an administrative     
capacity.                                                            
     One of her assignments was serving as project director  of a       
traveling exhibit of African-American art from the United States, as 
well as the Caribbean, with 100 works by 49 artists, which visited   
cities from Atlanta to Milwaukee. She was involved in editing the    
catalog for the exhibition as well.                                  
     From Dallas, McKenna went to the Amon Carter Museum in Fort     
Worth, where she did research on Western painting and sculpture.     
     During her career, McKenna became increasingly interested in    
research and scholarship in art history. The more she studied, the   
more she wanted to learn, she said, and decided to apply at Delaware 
to work toward a Ph.D. She was a teaching assistant her first year.  
This year she plans to finish her courses before beginning her       
dissertation.                                                        
     This past summer, she had an internship at the National Gallery 
of Art, doing research on American artists for a catalog of the      
museum's permanent collection.                                       
     The experience was exciting and educational, McKenna said.
Orientation programs were held for interns, giving a behind-the-scenes        
view of the workings of the famed museum. The program ranged from    
talks from conservators to the legal counsel and treasurer.          
     The University of Delaware was an excellent choice for her,     
McKenna said. Her field of interest is American art, more specifically        
that of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and the University is
highly regarded in this area and known for its strong research       
approach.                                                            
     A bonus is its central location, close to the major art museums 
and research institutions on the East coast, she added.              
                                        -Sue Swyers Moncure