Uncovering meaning behind paintings or sculptures drew Wayne Craven to the study of art, and sharing that information with others drew him to teaching.

Throughout his career, the recently retired Henry Francis du Pont Winterthur Professor of Art History was able to transfer his enthusiasm to his students, leaving a legacy of scholarly research and appreciation of American art.

In March, the Delaware Symposium on American Art, the oldest permanent forum for the presentation of new research in the history of the art of the United States, honored Craven on his 70th birthday for his contributions to the field.

Seven of the presenters were Craven's former students in UD's doctoral program in art history, and their return showcased Craven's success as a teacher and an adviser during 39 years at UD.

"I have always learned from my students, so when they came back and did such a wonderful program," he says, "it was just a tremendous reward. For all of the time it takes to train the graduate students, ultimately, it's worth it because they do such great things."

Craven includes the accomplishments of his students with his own list of achievements. Some hold professional positions at such notable places as the Metropolitan Museum of American Art, the Philadelphia Museum of Art, Monticello and the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. Others have gone on to work at such educational institutions as the University of Virginia, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the University of North Carolina.

"For those of us that teach, I think one of the important things to do is to convey to students the joy that we ourselves find in knowing and understanding things," says Craven, who received UD's excellence-in-teaching award in 1987. "When I put something beautiful up on the screen in the classroom, my job is over half done. The students warm to it. They like looking at beautiful things.

"Many of my books grew out of my classroom discussions and not just from my graduate classes. If I could tell by the questions from my undergraduates that the way I presented something wasn't that clear, I would rethink it, asking 'How can I make this point more convincing?' They knew things that I didn't know, and I hoped that they would also learn from me."

Craven, who originally trained to be an artist at the John Herron Art School, received his bachelor's and master's degrees from Indiana University. He earned his Ph.D. at Columbia University, where he wrote his doctoral dissertation, Iconography and Style
of the 13th-Century Sculptures of the West Façade of Auxerre Cathedral.

After studying to be a medievalist for so many years, his interest in American art happened almost by accident when he was asked to teach a course in that subject during his first year at UD. Not knowing much about the subject, Craven admits to scurrying around to find information on the relatively unknown field. But, once he began teaching the course, he found the subjects and the style of the art held an attraction for him.

"With American art," he said, "I felt so much more. I was dealing with the heart of my own people, and I had an affinity for it that had never happened when I was studying medieval art."

As he was preparing for the next semester, Craven decided there was an incomplete listing of American sculpture. So, in the summer of 1964, he and his wife, Lorna, started in Maine and worked their way south to Charleston, S.C., and then west to Cincinnati. They went to every cemetery, public park, library and town hall--any place they might find a sculpture.

"It took the whole summer," Craven remembers. "When I got to Cincinnati, the muffler fell off of my car. The car and I both said, 'This is enough.'"

Methodically, Craven kept all of the information he collected that summer on 3x5 cards, with photos of the pieces attached. He then allowed the Smithsonian to add his research to an ongoing pilot project on American art. Craven contributed 14,000 pieces from his index.

"The Smithsonian sent a truck up to Old College, backed it up the building and carried off all of my index and photographs," he says. "All I could picture was this truck lying on its side on the road with pieces of paper blowing everywhere. I said to myself, 'There goes my index.'"

His information made the trip, however, and is now part of the Index of American Sculpture, which is the basis for a computerized research archive at the National Museum of American Art.

Craven's interest in what drives an artist to make a certain artwork sparked his interest in art history.

"There is an intuitive reaction that you have to art--some you like, some you don't," he says. "The art is beautiful, but it can't tell us what it's about. It can only present its image. So, what the art historian does, particularly the teacher of art history, is explain what was important in that society-politically and religiously. We explain the artist's upbringing, for whom was the artist working and what the artist himself was really interested in. Once you start to ask and answer these questions, you know more about the work of art."

Craven's knack for shedding light on artwork by examining the artist's world also won him the 1984 Francis Alison Faculty Award. And, this year's symposium showed Craven that his influence on students and their work did not end with his retirement in December.

"At the end of the symposium presentation, people started clapping, the way you do at the end of a program to show you enjoy it," he says. "So, I started clapping too, and my wife elbowed me and said, 'Stand up, they're clapping for you!' And I stood up and looked around. The whole auditorium was clapping, and all the speakers on stage had big smiles on their faces.

"I think one of the most rewarding things about my profession is all of the great and wonderful things that my students have done. Their affection for the learning process that we went through together was genuine. You could tell at that moment that it was real."

-Laura Overturf, AS '99