Author: Lilly Forrest
When I first arrived at the University Art Gallery, I was unsure of what my internship would consist of. I had never worked for a smaller cultural institution before. While familiarizing me with the University’s eclectic collection, gallery director Dr. Sylvia Rhor Samaniego mentioned offhand that a faculty member had recognized her seventh-grade schoolteacher in a nude portrait by Western Pennsylvanian artist Malcolm Parcell, one of the gallery’s few acquisitions by the painter. Of course, this immediately caught my attention, and I found myself thinking about the story days later. I am a film production major as well as an art history major, so I couldn’t help but imagine the cinematic possibilities of Dr. Rhor’s anecdote.
Within the first few weeks of my internship, I approached Dr. Rhor and asked about the possibility of me pursuing this story and making a short film for the gallery. I was met with enthusiastic support. Since then, I have conducted interviews with Pitt faculty and Washington County residents, closely examined the portrait to do my own condition reports, and extensively perused the University’s and Carnegie Library’s databases for further information on the subject and the artist.
This independent research project will culminate in a short film to be posted on the UAG’s social media and website. I hope to explore who the subject, whom I believe to be, Mrs. Louise Fischer, really was. This is, of course, an unanswerable question, but the research I have put into this independent project has made me reflect on why I make and study art in the first place. Appreciating art is not about definitive answers. It’s about storytelling, guesswork, and forming our own relationship with the piece. Maybe next time you visit an art gallery you won’t recognize your seventh-grade teacher in a portrait. But my time in the University Art Gallery has reminded me that if you look close enough, you can always find points of connection in art.
Lilly Forrest, Museum Studies intern at the University Art Gallery, Spring 2023