The President of Upper School News, Elliot Bostwick Davis ’80 and Nicky Chapin ’52.
Imagine being surrounded by 5,000 pieces of art every day. That's the dream that inspired Elliot Bostwick Davis ’80 as a student at Chapin. As the speaker for the 13th annual Nicky Chapin Lecture, Dr. Davis explained that she was only in Class 3 when a school trip to the Metropolitan Museum of Art’s “Before Cortés” exhibit spurred her love of the art of the Ancient Americas. Now, as John Moors Cabot Chair of the Art of the Americas, she is immersed in art daily — art she chose for a new wing at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA) in Boston.
After studying art and archaeology at Princeton University and receiving an M.A., M.Phil. and Ph.D. in art history and archaeology from Columbia University, Dr. Davis completed a decade of curatorial work at the Metropolitan Museum of Art where she was first inspired. After that, she accepted her current position at the MFA.
Dr. Davis explained that it took her and a diverse team of architects, curators, designers, educators, and conservators nearly a decade to design and construct the 53 galleries filled with more than 5,000 objects dating from 900 BC to the late 20th century for the MFA’s Art of the Americas Wing, which opened in 2010. Five hundred new works of art (selected from over 3,500 that were acquired by the department during the process of creating the Wing) were selected by Dr. Davis and brought greater prominence to objects created by women, African American artists, Native American artists, Spanish Colonial artists, Latin American artists and African American artists.
Through a slideshow presentation, Dr. Davis illustrated some of the difficulties of constructing a new wing, such as getting a 900-pound, 49-foot-long beam into the museum. This 17th-century piece of timber preserved from the Colonial-era Manning House in Ipswich, MA, became the centerpiece around which one of the Art of the Americas Wing galleries was installed.
After her lecture, one of the girls asked Dr. Davis about the impact the Internet has had on museum exhibits. Her response may have seemed surprising. While extensive information exists on the MFA’s website, in the touchscreens in the galleries, and the Museum’s hand-held devices, Dr. Davis finds that as the world becomes more virtual, more people want to see the artwork in person.
Dr. Davis told the girls of her hope to continue to generate curiosity in those who come to the MFA to see the arts of North, Central and South America. Her other hope was that they, too, would follow their dreams as she had.