Reunion
Weekend and Conference
"Educated at Winterthur: A Half Century of Achievement"
September 21-22, 2001
Keynote Address
The Winterthur Programs,
'51 to '01: Are We There Yet?
by
Charles F. Hummel (WPEAC '55)
(as
presented on September 21, 2001)
|
(page 13--end) CONCLUSIONS 1. There must be a re-dedication on the part of both institutions to implement a vision that upholds the spirit and energy of the founders of the three programs; a vision that strives to make the programs the best in existence in the United States; a vision that demands striving for excellence in all that is undertaken. 2. There must be a strong role for trustees of both institutions to agree on that vision; to determine policy necessary to implement such a vision; and to provide oversight to see that implementation of that vision is on target. 3. There must be agreement on the knowledge, skills, and focus required of students to identify, interpret, and preserve the material culture heritage of the United States. There will always be a mix of students and faculty and/or administrative change. For that reason, Edna St. Vincent Millay's poem from Huntsman, What Quarry? needs to be in front of all of us responsible for training our students: "Upon this gifted age, in its dark hour, Rains from the sky a meteoric shower of facts . . . . they lie unquestioned, uncombined. Wisdom enough to leech us of our ill is daily spun; but there exists no loom To weave it into fabric." The dedication to Building a Bridge to the 18th Century, a small but thoughtful book published by Neil Postman of New York University in 1999, states "Soon we shall know everything the 18th century didn't know, and nothing it did, and it will be hard to live with us." For fifty years, graduate programs co-sponsored by the University of Delaware and Winterthur have trained professionals whose skills include educating the public about what objects can tell us about the lives, values, principles and state of knowledge possessed by not only the eighteenth century, but the seventeenth, nineteenth, and even, occasionally, the twentieth century. For the programs to survive the next fifty years, it will be necessary to build even better bridges to an understanding of the material culture of America's past.
|