“Philosophical Grounding”: Michael Ann Holly on Creating Visual Studies

In this episode of In the Foreground, Caro Fowler (Starr Director of the Research and Academic Program at the Clark Art Institute) speaks with Michael Ann Holly, the founding director of the Research and Academic Program. Michael describes what initially drew her art history, what interested her in historiography, and the importance of critical theory to her work. Caro and Michael discuss her contributions to the founding of RAP as well as the department of Visual and Cultural Studies at the University of Rochester, the first department of its kind in the United States. Additionally, Michael speaks to the influence and solace of the landscape of the Berkshires on her thinking and writing. 

Transcript

Speaker 1 0:01

Welcome to in the foreground conversations on art and writing. I am Carol Fowler, your host and director of the research and academic program at the Clark art Institute in Williamstown, Massachusetts. In this series of conversations, I talk with art, historians and artists about what it means to write history and make art and the ways in which making informed how we create not only our world, but also ourselves. And this episode of, in the foreground, I speak with Michael and Holly director, Meredith of the research and academic program at the Clark before establishing wraps. So late 1990s, Michael founded the department of visual studies at the university of Rochester. The first of its kind in the U S in our conversation, we discussed what initially drew her to our history, the early years of the research and academic program here at the Clark and the ways in which she finds constellation in art and nature does it's more like my landscape here is my unconscious and Brad was Mike consciousness.

Speaker 2 1:17

Thank you so much for joining me today, Michael, you are still so integral to the research and academic program at the Clark and we really , um, the program that you set up is , is so strong because of the work that you did. One thing that I, I heard you talk about a little bit, but I would love to hear more about, so you pursued a PhD, so a little later in life. No, I mean, it's not that you went straight into a PhD program. I didn't go straight to college. That's the problem. I was delayed all the way around . No , I had a baby when I was 18. So that , uh, that delayed certain things. Yes, I was , uh , pregnant at the first year. I was in college and I was thrown out of college. That's those were the days. And , um, so I went to , uh, live at home and I , uh, did not go to college. How old was I? I think I was probably probably 25. When I went to college, I then was married to my first husband who was , uh , had his first teaching job at Hobart and William Smith college. I will always feel great attachment to, and because he had just joined there after writing his dissertation, they allowed me to go tuition-free. So I I'm grateful because I was going to be a science major when I was 18 and I'm a zoologist. I wanted to be a zoologist, but , uh, by the time went there later, I was interested in humanities.

Speaker 3 3:05

And so did you take art history courses in college that first made you interested in the discipline?

Speaker 2 3:11

Uh, I did. It was a small , uh, department. I think it had three artists storylines . I took , um, the ones I remember most were taught by historians , uh , who were teaching art history. It was at the cusp there of where they were moving from other disciplines into art history. And , uh, I had great Renaissance art history teachers. I mean, history teachers, Nancy Strieber was a well-known one. Um, Marvin Brown , uh, Franco Lawson . And then the only art history I took was , uh, by way of Alison Kettering was a Northern Renaissance. Yeah . But I did enough art history because of those historians also teaching that I could do a double major, but I didn't apply to graduate school. Uh, except in intellectual history of the philosophy of history I was interested in. I was told I was accepted at Cornell in the history department, but they could give me a lot more money if I wanted to do art history, I could do. So I said , sure, you know, can I take courses in both? And , but I was so lucky because , um, uh, even though it was a small , uh, depar flourishing department at the time , uh, it had in my first year , uh, both Gombrich and backs and dog came as visiting professors split , uh, a seminar at different different times. And, you know, I was so thrilled to be working , uh, with them, but of course they left after that year and I thought, I'd be a medieval list. I was going to write a dissertation on the Romanesque lie in good. So I was bringing so ology, but , um, it , um, uh, that didn't interest me that much. Um, I decided to go back to history, intellectual history, and since so many people were writing historiography at the, at the time, it seemed to me why not do that in art history? So I rather boldly picked, chose Panofsky and then , um, uh , crest fellowship , uh, took me to the Warburg to study, not only with Gombrich and baxandall, but a particular favorite, Michael [inaudible] who had just written the critical historians of art. And Michael suggested I started attending his constraints and shop , uh, graduate seminars at Essex. Um, we would ride the train from London together once a week, and I learned so very much for him. Uh , I was , uh , a little bit of a funny story when I first arrived in London. Um, I , uh , Gombrich had invited me and I tried to arrange a meeting with him and he said, well, he was a little under the weather and I had to come to his house. So I was in such a state about this, go to Gombrich art and illusion had been a terribly important book to me. And I went to his house and his wife showed me into this Viennese Borzois interior, and then Gombrich came out, wearing his Stripe pajamas. And I was so I , nothing would ever terrify me as much as that meeting. I swear. Uh, but he got better. And , um, uh, I would audit there . They weren't really, they were reading courses, but Paul DROS at Essex was a full fledged , um, uh, you know , uh, seminar devoted to the critical historians of art. So that's, that's how I had gotten gotten there just because that's what historians were doing. And I liked the intellectual history, the history of history writing and other ones . Yeah .

Speaker 4 7:51

How did you choose Panofsky as , uh , as the figure to focus on what was it about him that

Speaker 2 8:01

Softly, bold of me? Uh, I thought , I, I just remember being so curious that all this historiography was being written around me and other disciplines and not, I hadn't read anything except Michael Paltrow's book, critical historian. And I thought, why don't I just choose an aspect of it? And on those train rides with Michael, I checked , do you think I dare do this? And he was very encouraging and I read like that whole year, I also had a baby that year, so it was reading with baby on my tummy. Um, but , um, he , uh, he encouraged me to study more , um, uh, Cassirer he had me translate Sarah and I had done any translation. I was very bad at that, but once I got so involved with Cassirer and then saw that there were all these early papers, German papers, Wolfen Rigo Panofsky , uh , that were very theoretical. Yeah . Not like American art history at all at the time. And so I thought, well, let's know , start with Panofsky and see where the trail takes you.

Speaker 3 9:27

Does he remain kind of a through for you throughout all your work? Uh, you know ,

Speaker 2 9:33

Um, what I do now is so different from anything Panofsky would have sanctioned, but of course, course he's important. He's important in one major way. And that he, he was a thinking artist story , and he wasn't just a practicing artist story . And he was involved with so many philosophical , um, issues when he was a very young man in his twenties. She was writing perspective as a symbolic form and had I not , uh, seen the possibilities of art history in that direction. Uh, I don't know that I would have been able to do anything other than a study of the Romanesque Elian , but

Speaker 3 10:23

Well, and it even seems today, I mean, Panofsky, and iconography often get dragged out as kind of an uncritical art history, art history. But in fact, as you say, he was so philosophically engaged and even , yeah .

Speaker 2 10:35

Oh yeah. And I fell in the spaces between iconography and I can Knology. And that even was at those attempts at a characterization of the difference between the two was something that really interested me for, for a long time.

Speaker 3 10:57

And so it was Rochester, your first job out of graduate school?

Speaker 2 11:01

No, I went right back to Hobart and William Smith where my husband , uh , was teaching in the , uh, English department. Uh , he's still teaching there. It's quite amazing. It's his first job and it's a wonderful school, wonderful experimental liberal arts , uh, college. And , uh, they were looking for somebody to teach medieval and Renaissance art around the time I was getting my PhD. So I went there, I eventually got tenure there. Um, and then Rochester , um, came calling and it was only an hour away. Um , my husband and I were separated , uh, by then, and I thought it made more sense than for me not be teaching at the same small school, no matter how much I loved it, aware he, you know , was Dean of the faculty. So I , um , drove every day to Rochester, still lived in Geneva so that my children could be with , um , their father. And , um, uh, Rochester asked me to come talk to them, which I did. And I , again, it was just a lucky chance because this was the height of Xerox and Kodak money. Uh, and they said an effect they'd had a kind of moribund master's program in art history, but they said , um, if I came, I could in effect , build a department money was there for hiring whoever I would deem would be important to build a PhD program in art history at Rochester, but I just didn't want it to be another , uh , tried and true art history department. And so that's how , uh, the first person I worked , um , there were such wonderful hirings there and I don't know anybody could do that again. I mean , uh, Mika, first of all , um, what I , I, I am so indebted to her for so many things caused Silverman, Norman Bryce , and , um, uh, Lisa Cartwright, Connie patently , uh, David rod awake , uh, Craig goings Douglas crimp Janet. Well , we were able to hire all of those people and put them in the art history department and then not call it art history because they came from so many different directions. Those were heady fun, sometimes frustrating days because of, we were always battling the region sport in New York state. And the , um, uh, the administration was suspicious of what we were trying to do. Are we ever going to get these , uh, graduate students jobs under this weird rubric? Um, but by the time I left there , um, and we had so many successful , um, former graduate students got their degrees from Rochester that even the president of the university was calling it , uh, eight years later, maybe the jewel in the crown of the Rochester, but it was, it was so much luck, so much serendipity. I can, I really resist taking much credit for how easy it was to put things together. Was that one of the first departments to kind of unite

Speaker 3 14:52

Itself under the rubric and visual culture?

Speaker 2 14:55

Oh, it was the first , I am very , very proud of that. Um, uh, California was the second. Uh, and I remember I was on the CAA board at that time. And I remember trying to get the , um, praise , uh, visual studies in some of the job applications. And there are others who are so resistant that, that takes away from art history. What is visual study? And now it's just amusing to me that every job description, if only I could have known then . And so now it's almost become a useless term because it doesn't have that toughness that fight in it , it, it did then

Speaker 3 15:42

What , what was that toughness? I mean, what did the term mean to you then that, that art history wasn't conveying?

Speaker 2 15:50

Probably it meant something to me that it didn't mean to other , um , uh , to me it meant, first of all, critical theory, critical theory, married to art history, using contemporary critical theories from, from identity politics to deconstruction, to , uh, break open the, the sh the shell of art history that had hermetically sealed. So , uh, I don't know that people would now say that , uh, it also meant, and you can see that from the kind of people I was able to hire. It broadened the definition of art. Uh , it , it , we could go to film, for example, that had an often been in , uh, art history departments, but we, we had anthropologist, we went to medical actually, who went to television. I never did that. I was still teaching medieval and Renaissance art, but I was teaching it from a perspective to the left of where it had had been before , uh, today. What I don't it's. So , um , capacious a term, it's almost as though , uh, art history gets subsumed under it, you know, it's, I mean, it welcomed tradition . We admitted and had teach people did traditional courses. It's not as though we, you know , uh, mainly tore everything down. We just built up other things alongside , uh, sided . And then the graduate students interested in those , um, um , challenges then started , uh, coming to us. I feel that I had have had three, roughly 15 year jobs, one at Hobart and William Smith, one at Rochester, and one at the Clark. So time can hedge a little bit here, but yeah, no, it was, it was, they were heady times and they were so challenging times. And to have those people working , uh , all together, building something that, I mean, meek and I w we started it , we had an old floppy disc , a giant thing that we would take turns taking home at night and tinkering with it. And I think she found it recently and she had it framed. I was going to have it half the year , and she was going to , Oh, we had so much, we had fun doing it. And it, you know, what we were, we were relatively young and the world was open to us. And art history had, was , uh, it was going to slowly die, a slow death. I thought if we were called the department of fine arts Rochester, and that's what it was about quality and art about masterpiece is about, you know , brilliant artists, not looking at other, all the other possibilities that you could pull in rain in under that, that term. So , yeah .

Speaker 4 19:20

So then, so was it Michael can 40, who tapped you to come to the Parker Institute?

Speaker 2 19:26

Hank Mellon ? Of course. Hank Mellon was the first director of , um, the , uh, national center for advanced study at the national gallery of art. And I had been there twice as a fellow and he was on the board here. And , um, he and Frank Oakley, I must give real credit to Frank Oakley and Michael conformity , uh, invited me to come and talk to them about the possibility here was this great library. I mean, an amazing library and only a handful of people using it. Master's students and a couple of teachers from the art department. And , uh, I just, and I thought, I, I just was too happy at Rochester. I didn't want to do that, but I did , uh , eventually get seduced into this. Um, and Darby came with me, Darby English was , uh , I graduate student Rochester, and he had been a student here at Williams. So he came with me and we just, it was a little bit like the first days of Rochester, Keith and I were running , um, uh, together national endowment for the humanities summer seminars for scholars and the Clark thought bill , that kind of thing we would maybe like to do , uh , here. So just one of those things that came together,

Speaker 3 21:13

What was your original vision for the program? I mean, what were the guiding, guiding principles for you in establishing it? What did you think was the necessary heart of running the program?

Speaker 2 21:25

What was the necessary , uh, uh, part, well, again, I wanted , um, the kind of thing that I was interested in, the intellectual history of the discipline, critical history of the discipline, along with, again, along with, and not in opposition to what I, what I considered , uh , the history of art. So, but I must have told you this story because Darby and I still laugh about it. Um, we came in and we got in our offices and Darby said to me, so now what we do , it's great to have all this money, but we've got to invent something. And he said, and he said, well, I think I'll sharpen the pencils. I'd been at a fellow at the Getty at that point a couple of times. And I kind of put the , uh , Casbah together with the Getty and then cut out what I didn't like in those programs, and then invented the smaller, a smaller , uh, uh, center for advanced study and art street . And what we didn't realize was how, how quickly it would take off. I think that the , this point the humanities were ready for something like that. We started with two or three fellows and John [inaudible] had been here for a year before me. I certainly should give him a credit. He and Michael had worked together a match, meaning this, this Institute or whatever we want to call it, this program. The one thing I wanted to be sure I did was get it notice . So we invited only major scholars or major scholars according to Michael, but they , they were , they were major. And once it was clear for the first two , two or three years, that anybody who was in the discipline , uh, everybody who was anybody in the discipline wanted to come here, they were coming with their , um, Guggenheims are there , Rockefellers are , um, uh , they just wanted to be here. And that's where the landscape is so important.

Speaker 3 23:55

The landscape is so important. And, and I was thinking about it because I read , um , your response in the art bulletin to your melancholy and art history essay, and then the response you start with entering into the landscape and kind of going, Oh , wow .

Speaker 2 24:12

I forgot that. Yeah . Yeah. I heard that

Speaker 3 24:15

You going to frame your response. So you brought the landscape of the Berkshire's and Williamstown into the art village. And what is it about the landscape that you think is so specific or how for you, especially someone who is engaged so deeply in phenomenological encounter and embodied encounter, how do you think the landscape specific to the Berkshire's has impacted your own writing?

Speaker 2 24:39

Yeah, it's, it's not an easy question to answer because it's more like my aunt landscape here is my unconscious and , uh , and rap was my , um , consciousness. Um, when I, when I thought I was doing a favor for Hank Mellon to come and talk to Frank Oakley and Michael about what they might do here, when I drove into, I pretty sure I told you this too, when I drove into the landscape on a winter's Eve laughter , a small ice storm. And I felt like I was driving into something from some mystical, magical glittering . I never even , I guess I'd heard of the Berkshire's, but I'd never, never come here. And I very soon felt very situated, very comfortable in this landscape and the changing seasons or , uh, were so important. You know, I had , uh , uh, lost my child. My younger son , um , died when he was a boy and I found only landscape is, was consoling. So whenever I didn't know what I was doing or was feeling sad or anything, what was, where did I go out into the Hills? I , I started calling the mountains. I was quickly disabused of that term. We're nowhere they Hills are not the mountain . And I always would be taking , uh, walks , uh , with my, my dogs. Um, Keith KA , Keith was still, you know, for 15 years was still at , uh , Columbia. So , uh , he wasn't here during the week. So it was, I was the one with a series of different dogs , um , walking them, but going into the landscape, I'm so grateful to be here during this, this world that we're in now, because I go out with the dogs every day. And what's happened here is that , uh , the animals that were in the shadows now that the people have retreated to the shadows, the animals have come out and we've seen wonderful things everyday , a bald Eagle flies. It's incredible .

Speaker 3 27:13

Wonderful. Did you never find that same constellation and art or in museums ? I mean, people, I feel like right now, people always talk about art as a sign of constellate constellation. There's all these digital initiatives.

Speaker 2 27:28

I've , I've always,

Speaker 3 27:29

I agree with you. I've always found landscape ultimately, and the outdoor is more compelling for my inner self, but there always feels like a push and pull for that being an art gallery .

Speaker 2 27:44

No, you asked me about that, you know, my, my early , um, connection to visual arts, because when I think of my later connections, I always loved landscape painting, but I never wrote about it. And then just this past year, I wrote a bit about , uh , landscape for a couple of essays, but , um, my earliest connection and it is a kind of sweet story. And I, I don't, I guess I'd kind of like to write about it sometime I was adopted when I was eight years old. Did I tell you this story? And um, I mean, I still know my biological mother, but I , uh, I had a , uh , Russian grandmother who had come to this country when , um , she was 17. She was a white Russian , um, during the , uh, various purchase . And she went to work for the , um, uh, for the Pentagon and she knew I was being adopted away from the, that biological family. And she came to visit me in the small town. I lived in, in the South and she brought me and I I'm looking across my bookshelf there, it's still prior to place , um, a child's introduction to art history. I never, I never knew about art and I didn't come from a family that was , um , interested in art. And this book is tattered and falling apart, but she wrote, and it was the last time I saw her ever. She wrote in the beginning page two , the two , the sweetest eight year old look at pictures. She said, look at pictures. So that I obviously looked at pictures and I remember, and at the pictures I looked at were late medieval Renaissance pictures. So that's that stayed with me. I didn't, I , I maybe that's why I took some courses in college, but it was after , um , Alexander my son died that pictures really, really became , uh, the , the constellation and pick , uh, paintings almost exclusively paintings, not just from 500, 600 years ago, but contemporary art as well. And that always surprised me cause I never studied it. But , um, so yes, that's a consolation as well.

Speaker 3 30:41

Well, so much of your work and your writing is really, especially in your last book is so deeply engaged with the, the melancholy and loss that you argue is integral to the art historical process. But we will, we will always be , um, the moment we start to write about an object or to face an object, we, we, we lose it.

Speaker 2 31:09

Um, I know bland show once said , uh , with every word we speak are right about art . We distant our distance ourselves, even more from it because it's the language that interferes yeah . Sort of that's how phenomenology had such an appeal to me.

Speaker 3 31:33

Yeah . Well, and it's such a profound, philosophical problem that , that I feel like you've , you've thought about throughout really your whole career. And maybe it, it came out the most strongly in your last book, but you, you also in your last book with the Isabella Stewart Gardner museum and her own mourning and her own the loss of her own son, and so many of your colleagues like make a ball and more Griselda often integrated their own autobiography into their writing. Whereas it seems you you've, you've made a very conscious decision not to insert your own autobiography into your writing, although I'm sure it must be in there .

Speaker 2 32:12

I only started writing about melancholy and art after my, my son died. Um, but , um, I think in the first, the prologue to that book, I do, yeah , I do mention that, but , um, so it's, it's more, it's more like a hidden wave or a hidden , uh , chord or something under what I write . I'm not trying to push it away because it's so deeply there. It's like a kind of unconscious of what I write that often comes to the fore . But when I was so miserable after my son died for, and at Rochester, they were very good to make me a, a year off just to, just to be, I mean, it's , it's unbelievably difficult. Um, and I , um, I would walk around the streets of ne I went to live with Keith in New York and I would walk around the streets of New York and realized that looking at all the anonymous faces that I would pass on the upper West side and realized that everybody has , um, some , uh, loss in their life, whether it's the loss of a person loss of an idea, or , and I just out of desperation, I began reading about mourning and melancholia. I was always attempted by psychoanalysis. Anyway. That's always been an interest of mine, but I really fell , uh , deeply into it. And it's, it's how I could stitch together my , uh , fascination with, with works of art, with loss, with history, with the past, you know, that , um, made sense to me. And so that is autobiographical. I don't know that I , that book would have been written at that time. I would have done something else, but it was its own constellation.

Speaker 3 34:30

What are the texts and critical theory that you really stuck with throughout your entire tenure teaching that you just found? Absolutely funded ?

Speaker 2 34:40

My phenomenologists always came up, but I wanted it to be very balanced in what I offered the students, but , uh, Heidegger was there Merleau-Ponty , um, um, people in the people who were important in , um, uh, the formation and the evolution of the , uh, discipline away from straight forward , uh, art history. So we would, we would have a week on deconstruction. We would have a week on feminism. We would have a week on identity politics just to , um, make them not make them, I hate that term. Uh , but , uh, have them become aware of the variety of thinkers about the visual that you wouldn't necessarily get an , uh, an art history course. So , uh, you know , one of my, two of my favorites are , um, uh, George D D Uber man , and I think he's terrific. And then in American art history , um, Alexander , uh, at Stanford , uh Numeroff uh , yes. Nemeroff.

Speaker 3 36:02

So in terms of teaching, I mean, what have you seen, you've been so deeply involved in the discipline of art history. I mean, both in starting the program at Rochester, your committee work with CAA , your committee work with the national humanities Institute and North Carolina rap . Um, so you've really been deeply involved in the humanities and art history for your whole career. What are the major changes and how , what, what has happened in the disciplines that has surprised you or that you perhaps didn't see coming?

Speaker 2 36:37

Um, I didn't, when I came here, I don't think it never even entered my mind , um, what global art history was or would be. And I was flying by the seat of my pants. So maybe began doing programs in other, other places. Eastern Europe was the first I had done that for the Getty for a number of times , um, and South Africa and the Pacific rim. I had no idea how much that would take off the idea that, I mean, I think it's absolutely crucial. I never write about it. I, I don't even read about it that that much, but I lived it , um , uh, when we, we were always taking our program on the road, so to speak or across the seas and not to the , the usual places I learned so much from so many , um, people and particularly in Eastern , uh, Eastern Europe , uh, I , uh , and it also, it just happened to work because that's what the funding agencies were interested in. And so we would, we would be well situated to, to try to do our little tiny , um, research Institute in , uh , on an international scene. I also was , um, at the time , uh, I was for six years, I think , um, chair of Rhea and that , uh, uh, had me , uh , uh, uh, made me acquainted with all these artists drawings from different worlds, with different questions and totally different answers. That was very, very important.

Speaker 3 38:38

Yeah. What are the initiatives in Eastern Europe really open up for you? Because I've heard you say that you felt those were some of your more successful international initiatives.

Speaker 2 38:48

Well, it's it, I, their way, their way of asking questions, their way of saying what , uh , what works , uh, what periods were important, what, how much , uh , how important the political commitment to works of art to them? I always kind of separated, you know, art and politics, art, art, and politics, but in particular, I mean, it was about the way, the way they lived and the battles they were fighting. I mean, it was amazing to be able to persist in it with a humanities program in the wake of everything that was going on in Eastern Europe, we were in , uh , Bella ruse when , um, they closed the university because of the, one of the major reasons was because of the seminars that we were doing there. And we were summarily dismissed , uh , had, had to leave and , uh, to, to know how to recognize and acknowledge, and mainly just be an army of people who , uh, studied the humanities at all costs that it, that it mattered. The humanities really mattered just in matter , in an academic way, but mattered in lives , uh , touched, touched by them.

Speaker 3 40:23

Oh , it's such an important point. It's something I've seen just in a short and my short time in this role , um, the international scholars we've brought in, I realized how incredibly privileged we are to take art history, discipline for granted to take for granted our access to libraries and electronic resources and , and how many people are so deeply, as you say, dedicated to our history and the humanity as a political cause that to be able to even study these subjects in a way that is intellectually free is , is to be politically engaged in there .

Speaker 2 40:58

Right? Yup . And they, when they , uh, say when a Polish artist, Aryan studies , uh, issues of formalism, what they mean is absolutely counter to what we might ask for them. Formalism is a political position for ups. It was simply , uh , a method for thinking about works of art.

Speaker 3 41:26

I think it's an exciting time in our history right now, because it does feel so open. And I think so much of the work that you and your peers did

Speaker 1 41:34

Around in the nineties around opening it up to critical theory. It's really, yeah.

Speaker 2 41:42

Again, I don't know. I think Mika knew Mika definitely was more , um , advanced than , than I was, but , uh, I even, she, and all her perspicacity did not know how important it was this , uh , sort of bursting open was going to be and how we were by chance in , in, on it. That was great.

Speaker 1 42:10

Yeah. Okay . Well, thank you so much for joining me today, Michael, it's fun chatting. I hope we'll be able to see each other in person for the new year. Thank you for listening to end the foreground conversations on art and writing our guests today. Michael also wanted to make sure to acknowledge the vital collaboration of the associate directors who worked with her during her time as director of rap , including Darby, English, Marriott , Westerman, Mark Ledbury , David Breslin and Christopher foyer , as well as her partner in scholarship and life. Keith, Montse more information on this episode and links to the books, articles and artworks discussed . Please consult clack art.edu/rap/podcast. The program was produced by Katelyn Woolsey Smith , the Paige and myself with music by late chaser, editing by John lutein and additional support provided by Gabrielle Almeda , Barilla , Alice Matthews , and you by she .