Word: leverett
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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According to Leverett House Master Professor John E. Dowling '57, the Leverett residents themselves actually chose the painting a few of years...
Once upon a time, a drab tapestry hung in the Leverett dining hall. Then the University Art Museum snatched the tapestry away for preservation. For a year, Leverett survived without art. (What would Barbra say?) Everyone wanted something different from the banal, old portraits that Dowling describes as "the Harvard dour faces-white males looking very serious." Finally, the House Masters scraped together enough private money to commission a picture from a young abstract artist, Gerry Webster...
Webster worked in Leverett for three weeks and painted three colossal canvases. Everyone living in Leverett was invited to a meeting to vote on which picture to keep. Dowling might maintain that if you don't like the painting, blame the alumni. But house lore has it that the three paintings were strikingly similar. Judging by the winner, the selection must have been grim...
Master Dowling realizes the Leverett painting is "controversial. People are suspicious of abstract art. The fact that it evokes emotion is positive. It livens the hall and its texture fits very well. My wife and I think that it's terrific...
Emily J. Bowen '97 says that the Leverett painting "reminds me of the art that abstract expressionism detractors create when they try to prove that abstract art isn't art." Luckily for her, Bowen lives in Winthrop House and doesn't have to be attacked by painting at every meal...