Getty Museum director tells Wheaton graduates to take charge of their education
May 20, 2000
[NORTON, Mass.] [~] Author and art historian John Walsh, director of the internationally renowned J. Paul Getty Museum, challenged the 354 members of Wheaton College's Class of 2000 to take hold of their own lifelong education and resist the temptation to "multitask" through life, emphasizing instead the pleasures and rewards of focus over virtuosity.
"Long before we taught 'multitasking' to machines, I was brought up with some crude prototype of Windows software in my head," Walsh said. "I usually ran several programs at once, clicking back and forth, and always looking for a pull-down menu of new distractions.
"What's more, I thought that virtuosity would be a social advantage to me, the ability to impress people by doing a lot of things at once, and none of them well. A few geniuses can succeed this way; most of us can't and shouldn't try." [The complete address is available online.]
Among the more than 600 alumnae/i who participated in the graduation as part of their Reunion Weekend were George Sargent Leubuscher of Florida and Muriel Sargent North of New Jersey, members of the Class of 1925. College President Dale Rogers Marshall and Wheaton's Alumnae/i Association honored the two women on their 75th reunion and thanked them for a lifetime commitment to the college.
During his address Walsh reminded students that their educational careers belong to them and no one else. He cited the structured, profession-oriented focus of many graduate programs that "conspire to keep you close to the library and the computer, and away from the real subject of your study."
"From now on, you had better put yourself in charge of your own education, if you haven't already," Walsh admonished. "You may have to buck the system.
"Our graduate schools produce a lot of half-baked bread in the interest of getting it on the shelf quicker. Don't let the weaknesses of the system become weaknesses of your own. Look critically at what you're asked to learn and how. If it's too little, and too confined to the campus, then swallow the need to stretch out the time you spend, take courses not on the prescribed menu, and travel. [sigma]Parents, listen. You might have to subsidize even more education than you imagined, and it won't all look like work. But it's in a good cause."
Walsh was appointed director of the Getty in 1983, where he has overseen the dramatic growth of collections containing some of the highest quality works of art worldwide and the conception and construction of an architecturally stunning new and larger museum. Under Walsh's directorship, the Getty has acquired a number of important and internationally significant works, including Irises by Vincent van Gogh and Michelangelo's drawing, The Holy Family with Infant.
Joining Mr. Walsh on the dais May 20 were honorary degree recipients Denise Jefferson '65, director of the Alvin Ailey American Dance School in New York City; celebrated abstract artist Emily Mason and her husband, Wolf Kahn, a painter of abstract interpretations of landscape; and Anson Beard, outgoing chairman of the Board of Trustees and a longtime friend of the college.
Wheaton is a private coeducational liberal arts college with a 1,500-member student body drawn from 45 states and 81 countries. It is a member of the Twelve College Exchange, which also includes Amherst, Bowdoin, Connecticut College, Dartmouth, Mount Holyoke, Smith, Trinity, Vassar, Wellesley, Wesleyan and Williams.