On the Campus - April 22, 1998
Past editions of On the Campus, Online
by Kelley King '98
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PAW's student intern finds inspiration in memorials BY NANCY SMITH '00 | |
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As the student intern at the PAW, one of my duties each publishing cycle is to proofread the magazine's memorials. Actually, it's something I enjoy doing. As I scan the columns for misspelled names, grammatical errors, and typos, I can't help but read these stories with interest. Their endings, of course, are sadly predictable, but it's everything in between -- not whether it was a heart attack, cancer or old age -- that allows me to take away more from the experience than a lesson in mortality. Perhaps it's my perspective as a college student that allows me such a positive outlook on these unfortunate announcements. I see the memorials as windows of possibility instead of as a morbid mirror showing me my inevitable fate. I often wonder where my life will lead me after Old Nassau, and I find it fascinating to contemplate the life and career paths of those who came before me. In any given issue, there might be cardiologists, pastors, professors, or entrepreneurs. In fact, the wide range of alternatives often gives me perspective that's hard to come by on a campus full of competitive twentysomethings all working to refine their résumés and land interviews. A conversation with nearly any current student browsing through the job binders at the University's Career Services Department will generate at least one mention of consulting or investment banking -- often seen as the measuring sticks against which all majors are evaluated. After chatting with a freshman in one of my classes who said he'd decided against majoring in English because he wanted to make money, I wanted to show him some of PAW's memorials. In these short passages, it seems that all these venerable Princetonians followed their dreams and retired without regret; their choices were lucrative, in the important sense of the word. And in response to another friend of mine, who hesitated on studying environmental policy because he wanted to fulfill a material American Dream, I wanted to bring up people like Adlai Stevenson '22 and George Kennan '25. ³What if you have an amazing idea to stop global warming,² I asked him, ³that no one else would otherwise propose? Would the world have been a better place if Jimmy Stewart ('32) had been an investment banker?² My unscientific survey of the magazine's memorials also suggests that the actual career decisions -- not just the range of ³viable² alternatives -- has changed over generations. For instance, I'm more likely to run into a journalist or a statesman on the back page of the PAW than to find a classmate headed in that direction. And the memorials for those yet-to-be-grandfathers who graduated in the '60s and '70s usually trace their progression through the business world instead of that of politics or academia. In marking these different choices of different generations of Princetonians, I often ask myself if professional idealism is something that's being gradually and irreplaceably nudged out, along with the Class Notes columns from the '20s and '30s. That's not to say a career in business or management can't be personally fulfilling or can't fulfill the ³Princeton in the nation's service² ideal -- but after witnessing my own classmates admit to compromising their personal integrity for the chance to return to Reunions in a Ford Explorer, I can't help but approach my proofreading with a sense of nostalgia. Perhaps the calling for starry-eyed greatness isn't as deep in 1998 as it was for Woodrow Wilson 1879, whose tempestuous idealism plagued his presidency. Or perhaps this idealism is merely finding different, less professional avenues, such as volunteer community service. It's equally possible that, in glorifying the Stevensons and the Stewarts and the Fitzgeralds who preceded us, we lose sight of the fact that many of their classmates were successful in relative obscurity. If anything, reading the PAW memorials gives me something to aspire to. Perhaps that sounds backwards or self-defeating; Princeton's closeted English majors will identify the irony. But if we were to contemplate the fact that our time here on earth is short, we might consider our limited mortal existence as a shot at immortality -- or, not to overstate the cause, simply as a chance to be remembered after we are gone. Those whose great names are familiar echoes on this campus are not remembered for the estates they couldn't take with them, but for the legacy they left for us to ponder as we forge our own paths after Princeton. |
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Creative arts, especially photography, are popular with students by Kelley King '98
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Two gentlemen wearing brown
tweeds stood in the lobby of
the Art Museum one Monday last month, speaking in
hushed tones. Like many disappointed visitors, they had arrived to
find the collection was closed on Mondays. Prompted by the sight
of art history students emerging from a nearby lecture hall, their
talk shifted to curricula. "It's one thing to study art," said one, "but
if you're a young artist today, would you ever come to Princeton?"
The question was rhetorical, and his companion demurred.
Men in tweeds and aspiring artists alike don't associate Princeton with an art education. It's true that Princeton doesn't tend to draw young artists, but since establishing programs in creative writing, theater and dance, and visual art in 1975, it has committed itself to graduating them. |
 Illustration by Mike Witte '66 |
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Back in 1882, Allan Marquand 1874 became the first professor in the new Department of Art and Archaeology, funded principally by an endowment from his uncle, Frederick. The aim was to teach the boys "aesthetics." It was from this early curriculum of the study of art and culture that a program devoted to the creation of art eventually derived. Now, many of the introductory classes in visual art, which encompass drawing, typography, lithography, sculpture, ceramics, and photography, are so popular that students have to submit portfolios to be considered. Candidates are given interviews, which the instructors, a uniformly sensitive bunch, prefer to call conversations. Students are judged on ability, enthusiasm, and seniority. Instructors don't want to deny anyone enrollment, but are forced to. More than 100 students want to take one of the two beginning photography classes, which typically hold a dozen students each. Photography, one of the last subjects to find its place in the curriculum, causes the most excitement. It attracts mostly novices, many of whom are planning to major in engineering and architecture, and often produces a wealth of professionals whose work is shown, sold, and imitated internationally. Photography at Princeton had humble beginnings: even before a course was offered for credit and a darkroom installed in the early 1970s, undergraduates skulked around campus with cameras hoping to produce something different from what decorated the front pages of The Daily Princetonian. Dr. M. Jay Goodkind '49 remembers developing 4 x 5 negatives in his dorm room: "I'd wait until late at night and shut the curtains, mix my own chemicals and use a lightproof developing tank." Rinsing prints with no sink or faucet at hand was a bit tricky, but he toted in pails of water from the bathroom. In the early 1970s, art historian Peter Bunnell began to teach the history of photography, and he helped to bring photographer Emmet Gowin to the university in 1973. Gowin has held court over the photo lab ever since, and has been complemented by various visiting professionals, who, according to Gowin, "had as different a point of view as we could stand." Gowin currently works with Deanne Sokolin, a photographer whose specialties -- color and digital imaging and, as one of her students puts it, "cutting-edge New Yorkishness" -- dovetails with Gowin's classic techniques and general "seasonedness." When talking about the photography program, Gowin is eager to promote the achievements not of staff, but of students, including those who did not go on to exhibit or win grants, but whose undergraduate photography was marked by passion and growth. He recalls, for example, Queen Noor of Jordan (Lisa Halaby '73), who in her preroyalty years, was just another student struggling to pin down the mysteries of f-stops while gaining the eye of a photographer. She had what Gowin considers the essential tools of "perception," but she decided, like most of his students, "to go on to other things." Notable successes of those who didn't go on to other things include Accra Shepp '84, who was featured this year in The New York Times for his Whitney Museum show of the Grand Central Station mechanical underground; Andrew Moore '79, whose work includes large-format color prints of abandoned theaters and video stills; Fazal Sheikh '87, whose latest book, A Sense of Common Ground, features prints on his focal subject of African refugees; and Natasha Bult '91, who teaches photography in London. On that Monday last month, the Art Museum's exhibits included general photographs by alumni. Had the tweed-clad gentlemen gotten a chance to see the exhibits, which included several photographs by alumni, their brief conversation on the merits of an artistic education at Princeton might have gone another way. Kelley King studies with Emmet Gowin and can be reached at keking@phoenix.princeton.edu. |
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