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Emphasizing Beauty as Well as Duty - con't. "First, I wanted students to have a general knowledge, and then they could get rid of some of what they learned. Some of it would take, and I would push them to develop it. Some students were interested in drawing, some in painting. Others found it more interesting to work in three dimensions, in clay, or even in architecture. And everyone did a great deal of collage, which did not require facility in drawing but trained the students to see very carefully and to organize shapes." One of the more ambitious projects began as an exercise by two students who were not particularly gifted in painting and drawing. Initially, they created architectural models to illustrate various alternatives in urban planning, and then they began to design an ideal residential community they called "Exborough." It grew into an elaborate class project that continued for two years and became, he says, "quite an event on campus." Another major student work received national exposure. Folds collaborated with two advanced painting students on the design and execution of a 55-foot-wide mural of football players in action. Following its unveiling in the gym, according to Folds, the portable mural helped inspire an undefeated season and a victory over Andover. Subsequently, adds Folds, "it was sent around the country to get people interested in Exeter," and traveled to San Francisco for the annual convention of the American Federation of the Arts, where it was displayed on stage while Folds delivered his keynote address on art in the secondary school curriculum. In addition to his teaching duties, Folds assumed responsibility for the display of art throughout the campus. His classroom on the ground floor of the Academy presented an ever-changing display of fine reproductions with explanatory texts and questions; these took the place of a "dry and dusty textbook" in his art history class. He hung large color photographs of old master paintings "all over the place, in dining halls, common rooms and hallways." He redesigned the "classical museum" for the Latin Department and created biweekly exhibitions on bulletin boards in Phillips Hall and the Academy Building. One such display caused an immediate reaction. Soon after Folds installed a large color reproduction of Michelangelo's Creation of Adam on the Phillips Hall bulletin board, Frank Cushwa pulled him aside, concerned that "somebody's going to mark up the you-know-what." Folds chose a less accessible spot over a classroom door. The most important exhibitions were installed in a new gallery on the ground floor of the Davis Library, which Cushwa described as "equipped and lighted in the manner of the latest exhibition rooms in our best museums." Shows rotated frequently, usually every month, and included original works and reproductions, temporary loans as well as school collections. Certainly the highlight of his first gallery season was the exhibition of paintings loaned by Paul H. Bonner '11, which included original works by Degas, Renoir, Henri Rousseau, Tissot, Augustus John, Derain, Vlamink and Jacob Epstein. Folds showed an early commitment to art photography, although his taste clashed with most of the students in the active photography club. When he borrowed a major group of American Pictorialist photographs from the recently founded Museum of Modern Art, students resisted the medium as fine art and complained that the pictures were too small. The teacher was vindicated by the exhibition's effect on one student, who approached him at the end of the year and said, "You know, I am going to become a photographer." Indeed, says Folds, the student went on to spend "twenty years in Asia as photographer for the British Architectural Review. Something took with him. He was very excited about the show." | ||
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ART AT THE ACADEMY TODAY NICK DAWSON:
One short-term consequence of this change: students need more time, and help, to learn basic construction techniques and principles that would have been second-nature for earlier generations. But it's the long-term consequences that concern Dawson: Something is missing from a student's education, he feels, when none of the learning is literally "hands on," when students memorize and analyze but never make something of their own. "What's poignant," he says, "is the pride students take in what they've built," whether it's a space sculpture, a chair built from cardboard or a complex architectural model. "And there's nothing I enjoy more than showing a student how to build for the first time." Dawson studied architecture at Dartmouth, where he earned his BA, and then at the University of Pennsylvania, where he earned his master's studying with Anne Tyng, a close associate of UPenn's best-known architect, Louis Kahn. Today, Dawson makes good use of the Louis Kahn-designed Academy Library: students study its design (or, as Dawson puts it, "the poem of the library"), and climb up to the roof for the annual egg-drop competition. Other assignments include designing a prospective dorm-house, a project that encourages students to think hard about the needs of the occupants and the demands of the site. "Here in New England," Dawson explains, "you'll have a basement because it's the best way to deal with frost. And you'll go up a few stories, because that's the best way to save lawn space. But if you're a student from another region of the country, say the Southwest, you wouldn't necessarily know this, or why we'd probably want some south-facing windows." Conversely, Dawson recalls questioning a student who had put the common room in the basement of his dorm model. "I told him it would be nice to have some sunlight, and he replied, 'But we're never in it during the day.' " Dawson's goal for these projects is that students learn something about the combination of "imagination, functionality and craft" that is successful architecture. - by Beth Brosnan
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