{"id":149791,"date":"2022-11-09T15:46:00","date_gmt":"2022-11-09T20:46:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/?p=149791"},"modified":"2023-06-07T12:15:57","modified_gmt":"2023-06-07T16:15:57","slug":"wyeth-world-first-year-seminar-discovers-new-england-identity","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/2022\/11\/09\/wyeth-world-first-year-seminar-discovers-new-england-identity\/","title":{"rendered":"An inside look at the ‘invention’ of New England with Victoria Wyeth ’01"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

In Wasilla, Alaska, this summer, incoming Bates student Karsten Stiner \u201926 looked through the offerings for First-Year Seminars, and landed on one offered by Professor Emerita of History Margaret Creighton. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Called \u201cInventing New England: The World of the Wyeth Family,\u201d it promised a rich look at both the place he was moving to and three generations of American artists named Wyeth: N.C., his son Andrew, and Andrew\u2019s son Jamie. Stiner had never heard of them, and he mostly associated the words \u201cNew England\u201d with a football team, the Patriots. \u201cI\u2019d heard the term like four times in my life,\u201d he says, smiling. \u201cI didn\u2019t even know what states were included in New England.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Phyllis
Victoria Wyeth \u201901 introduces the Wyeth family during a classroom presentation filled with digital images of her family\u2019s painting, including the famous 1948 work Christina\u2019s World<\/em>, which hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

As he signed up, he did note that it was interesting that a Wyeth family member, Victoria Browning Wyeth \u201901, who is the only grandchild of Andrew and Betsy Wyeth, would lecture in the course, helping to answer sweeping questions like: What is New England? Who and what gets included in popular images of the region? How does New England differ from other imagined areas, particularly the American West?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But he didn\u2019t realize what having a Wyeth as a teacher would actually mean, or how deep of an insider\u2019s look that she would provide into Wyeth World, especially during the group\u2019s ultimate Midcoast road trip on an October day. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cI didn\u2019t know that this would all be involved,\u201d Stiner said as he walked through fields browning in the Maine autumn under gray skies, the tidal reaches of the Saint George River a few hundred yards away. He\u2019d just come from a tour of a Wyeth family home in Cushing, with a window seat looking out over the very New England countryside.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Phyllis
Emma Erkkila ’26 (left) of Helskinki and a Wyeth family friend, Trysdan Galvin (right, age 16), share a moment with Wyeth on along the rocky shore of the St. George River, a favorite place of reflection for Wyeth. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The group wrapped up the day at the famed Olson House in Cushing, the setting from many of Andrew Wyeth\u2019s works, a tour of his very last studio, and a visit to the grave of Andrew and Betsy Wyeth, where Victoria would leave a couple of pumpkins, in honor of the Wyeth family love of Halloween (and kiss her grandparents\u2019 tombstone, as she does on every visit). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

There\u2019d even been a guest star: one of Andrew Wyeth\u2019s models from the 1970s, who talked to the students about what it was like to pose for the painter of such works as the iconic 1948 work Christina\u2019s World<\/em>, which hangs in the Museum of Modern Art in New York.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Walking ahead of Stiner on the dirt road were his classmates and both his teachers, who two decades ago were teacher and pupil. Creighton was Wyeth\u2019s thesis advisor when she was at Bates, and also her professor in a course that offered deep community engagement in Lewiston. Wyeth, who majored in American Cultural Studies, says today that Creighton was a vital part of her development as a Bates student, nurturing and mentoring her. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Phyllis
Professor Emerita of History Margaret Creighton and Victoria Wyeth \u201901 compare notes while at the Olson House, the subject of numerous works of art by Andrew Wyeth. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

She and Wyeth began talking about co-teaching this First-Year Seminar last year. As Bates continues to improve and revamp its overall First-Year Experience program<\/a>, both traditional and brand-new seminar offerings such as “Inventing New England” continue to play a key role in introducing students to Bates academics \u2014 close contact with professors, intensive writing and building both a real sense of community and of place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the case of \u201cInventing New England,\u201d a sense of place is particularly pertinent. The syllabus is filled with New England specific work, like Carolyn Chute\u2019s 1985 novel The Beans of Egypt, Maine,<\/em> but also some classic Westerns, such as John Ford\u2019s Stagecoach,<\/em> to provide perspective on how the American West is represented on screen or canvas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThat was a good way to start talking about region and regional identity and how the West got imagined in dominant American culture,\u201d Creighton says. \u201cAnd one of the advantages here is that N.C. Wyeth did a lot of Western paintings as well.\u201d <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Professor
Professor Emerita of History Margaret Creighton gestures in front of Andrew Wyeth\u2019s 1938 tempera painting Young Swede<\/em> during one of stops on the field trip, at the Farnsworth Museum of Art in Rockland, where the Wyeth Center showcases works from all three generations of Wyeth painters. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The field trip to the coast had started with an up-close and personal visit to the art itself at the Farnsworth Museum in Rockland, where artworks from all three generations of painters are well represented in the Wyeth Center. There, Victoria Wyeth, who knows the paintings the way others know a family photo album, led the students through multiple galleries.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

She\u2019s a generous and ebullient lecturer, gesturing for emphasis, always inviting student input and sharing strong opinions about everything, from the media Andrew Wyeth used \u2014 on watercolors she says, \u201cthey control him, he doesn\u2019t control them\u201d \u2014 to results. While talking the students through the composition of one study for a later work, she confides \u201cI actually like this better than the final version.\u201d She also connects with her own Bates experience, readily offering up a tale of getting a B-minus in an art history class in the middle of the whirlwind of her highly personalized, expert crash course in the Wyeths. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Phyllis
Wyeth draws Leah Belber of Washington, D.C., and Trinity Poon of Forestdale, Mass., toward a detail of an Andrew Wyeth canvas at the Farnsworth Museum. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In one gallery, currently showing Islands in Maine<\/em>, an Andrew Wyeth show of works from Muscongus and Penobscot bays spanning the period from 1939 to 2008, when Wyeth and his wife Betsy spent his last summer on Benner Island, Victoria Wyeth stopped in front of a 1999 study for Dock<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It shows a woman walking down a dock. The image of a woman walking away, straight-backed and somehow resolute, even from behind, conjures up a hundred possible stories for the imagination, but Wyeth knows the real one. \u201cI always told you, he paints his life,\u201d she told the class. The woman is Ann Call, she explained, a frequent model, easy to recognize by her perfect haircut. Call worked with Wyeth\u2019s grandmother Betsy on Benner Island, but lived on nearby Allen. \u201cSo this is her getting ready to go on the boat for the end of the day,\u201d Wyeth said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Phyllis
Karsten Stiner \u201926 (right) of Wasilla, Alaska, leans in for a closer look at a painting with, from left Chase Conrad of Essex, Conn., Shay Compolongo of Alpharetta, Ga, and Sarah Lieber of Wilmette, Ill., at the Farnsworth Museum. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Wyeth lectures worldwide on the artists in her family. In 2011, she shared some of her never-before-displayed collection of family works in an exhibition at the Bates Museum of Art. As a student, she organized a 2001 show at the museum focused on her grandfather\u2019s process from a series of studies to the final painting, Her Room<\/em>, which was the very first Wyeth painting acquired by the Farnsworth in 1964. (She\u2019s also a talented photographer, who has occasionally exhibited her work, including portraits of her grandfather.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

As the group moved around the galleries, Wyeth leaned into paintings and invited the students to do the same, to see all the little things that don\u2019t show up in digital slides quite the way they do in person, like the little birds, and the dry brushwork that sketches out a lichen-covered roof, or \u201cjust the feeling of this storm coming in.\u201d She knows the technical details of the works, like the way her grandfather came to use and cherish tempera as a medium, but also the emotional landscapes behind them.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Victoria
Wyeth smiles at students in front of a photograph she made of her grandparents, Andrew and Betsy Wyeth, that hangs in her Cushing, Maine, home. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

She drew the students in to look at the last painting Andrew Wyeth completed before his death in 2009. It\u2019s a view of a white building on the shore of Allen Island and its ghostly reflection in the water, and is called simply Goodbye<\/em>. Wyeth reminded the students that her grandmother typically named her husband\u2019s paintings and then asked if they could tell which white parts of the painting were tempera and which were simply the white panel, left bare by the artist. Leah Belber of Washington, D.C., got right in, and she and Wyeth debated the topic before deciding neither one of them can tell for sure. But it was easy to agree that the painting is beautiful, a haunting farewell to a well-loved place.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Victoria Wyeth \u201901 kisses the gravestone of her grandparents Andrew and Betsy Wyeth, where she left pumpkins, in the spirit of the family’s love of Halloween. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Belber was one of several students already well-acquainted with the concept of New England, and even the Wyeths themselves. She signed up for the course because \u201cI love museums and I love looking at art.\u201d She\u2019s been relishing the interplay between Creighton and Wyeth. \u201cIt\u2019s definitely quite a class. They have a fun dynamic.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Josh Smith of Farmington, Maine, felt a pull to the class because in his family home, a print of Jamie Wyeth\u2019s Fog Bound Coast<\/em> has long hung on the wall.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"An
At the Farnsworth Museum, an early work of Andrew Wyeth, Charlie Ervine<\/em> (1937, tempera on panel) captures the attention of Josh Smith of Farmington, Maine, Joe Yoxall of Dallas, and Liam Shlager of Ross, Calif. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Riley Baker of Northfield,Ill., says she signed up because \u201cI just wanted something different,\u201d but as with Smith, a specific piece of art sparked her connection. She attended St. Andrews in Delaware, where a giant mural by N.C. Wyeth covers the wall of a dining room. And that mural is featured in Dead Poets Society<\/em>, a 1989 film shot at St. Andrews. Baker has watched it over and over again. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

When Liam Shlager of Ross, Calif., signed up for the course, he, like Stiner, was a newcomer to the Wyeth mythology but was intrigued. \u201cThen I walk in the first day and Miss Wyeth is there and I was like, \u2018Oh wow, this is going to be big.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Leah
Leah Belber of Washington, D.C., photographs the view from a window in a Wyeth residence facing the St. George River. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

And it has been, from the lively classroom discussions about art to the history lessons and insider stories about growing up in the Wyeth family, where artistic talent tends to make itself evident by age 6, according to Victoria. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Getting to spend a day touring various Wyeth-related properties, and hearing from one of Wyeth\u2019s iconic models in person, standing in the exact spot in the farmhouse where Wyeth painted her as a teenager 50 years ago, only elevated the experience. \u201cLike 100 percent,\u201d Shlager says.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The model, who asked not to be named, shared a detail about posing for Andrew Wyeth, about how he asked her to wet her hair every time she arrived to pose, and that detail caused Victoria to gasp. \u201cYou never told me this,\u201d she said. \u201cI am blown away.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Phyllis
Wyeth offers first-year students an inside look at the Wyeth homestead in Cushing, Maine, which includes a handcrafted boat housed in her family\u2019s barn. From left, Chase Conrad of Essex, Conn., Audrey Esteves of Cranford, N.J., Riley Baker of Northfield, Ill., Karsten Stiner of Wasilla, Alaska, and Trinity Poon of Forestdale, Mass. (Phyllis Graber Jensen\/Bates College)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

\u201cThis is so cool,\u201d Victoria went on. \u201cThat\u2019s how you guys are going to remember this. I mean, I know it\u2019s sinking in now, but I\u2019m telling you, in 20 years? You\u2019re going to remember this.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For Wyeth herself, the excursion was equally joyful. \u201cI was so thrilled to get to know my students on such a different level,\u201d she says. \u201cWe all had a blast on the bus ride to Cushing. I learned about their taste in music and some fun family stories. I can\u2019t quite put into words how much closer it made us as a class. We went from being a class to feeling like a family.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

In Wasilla, Alaska, this summer, incoming Bates student Karsten Stiner \u201926 looked…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1283,"featured_media":149788,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_hide_ai_chatbot":false,"_ai_chatbot_style":"","associated_faculty":[],"_Page_Specific_Css":"","_bates_restrict_mod":false,"_table_of_contents_display":false,"_table_of_contents_location":"","_table_of_contents_disableSticky":false,"_is_featured":false,"footnotes":"","_bates_seo_meta_description":"A First-Year Seminar takes a deep dive exploring New England through the artistic eyes of the Wyeth family.","_bates_seo_block_robots":false,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_id":0,"_bates_seo_sharing_image_twitter_id":0,"_bates_seo_share_title":"The 'invention' of New England with Victoria Wyeth '01","_bates_seo_canonical_overwrite":"","_bates_seo_twitter_template":"summary_large_image"},"categories":[4,11010,32,224],"tags":[12299,12331,10873,10893,9046],"class_list":["post-149791","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-academic-life","category-arts","category-maine-and-new-england","category-society-culture","tag-class-of-2026","tag-first-year-experience","tag-first-year-seminar","tag-margaret-creighton","tag-victoria-wyeth"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149791","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1283"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=149791"}],"version-history":[{"count":11,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149791\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":152570,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/149791\/revisions\/152570"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/149788"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=149791"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=149791"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bates.edu\/news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=149791"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}