23 Years Later: Allen Memorial Art Museum
The front of Allen Memorial Art Museum. The inscription reads: "The Cause of Art is the Cause of the People." I always loved that. Sometimes an art museum changes the course of one's life. For the first time in 23 years I flew back to my alma mater, Oberlin College in Ohio to visit my first home as an artist, the Allen Memorial Art Museum . I arrived on campus as an awkward 18 year old freshman intending to major in Sociology. Yet I found myself returning to the Art Museum with increasing frequency as the semester progressed. The lure of the Museum's exhibits became too strong to resist. By November of my first semester I switched to majoring in Studio Art. Philip Koch with the Dutch painter Hendrick ter Brugghen's oil St. Sebastian Tended by Irene , 1625 Andria Derstine, Allen's Director, generously gave me a good part of her day, touring the Museum with me and filling me in on changes since my time on campus. I asked her to ...