Alumni
Art History Alumna Builds Collections at Getty Research Institute
How does it feel to be responsible for bringing more than 165,000 people into a museum during a three-month period? Frances Terpak (’70 B.A., ’72 M.A. Art History) knows. She co-curated the Getty Research Institute’s Devices of Wonder exhibition, held at the J. Paul Getty Museum from November 2001 until February 2002, which was so popular that Terpak herself could barely get past the line of people outside who were anxious for a final peek on the exhibition’s last day.
Terpak, Getty Research Institute senior collections curator, says one of the goals of the exhibition was to inspire people to think about how we perceive the world today and how we have come to rely heavily on media-dependent enhancements. “I think because many of the historical gadgets on display were shown to have an immediate relevance to our everyday existence, people came back several times to understand and interact with the roots of modern media.”
Devices
of Wonder was the largest and most complex exhibition the Getty Research
Institute has mounted. According to Terpak, it explored “the enduring
entanglement of humans with the magical technologies and artful instruments
we have placed between our eyes and the world.” She served as co-curator
with Barbara Stafford, a former Getty scholar and a distinguished professor
of art history at the University of Chicago. The pair began thinking about
the exhibit in the early 1990s, when the Research Library acquired a pre-cinema
collection including items such as 18th-century paper theatres and a portable
French camera obscura, circa 1750, that folds up into the shape of a book.
Upon examination of the wide array of treasures, Terpak says the links with
our modern communication system became apparent, and the seed for Devices
of Wonder was planted. She and Stafford worked intensely for seven
years developing the exhibition, writing the catalogue and devising a display
that made provocative connections between works of art, scientific instruments,
toys and games. Visually stimulating and highly entertaining, the exhibition
captivated people of all ages and professions.
Devices of Wonder is a highlight in Terpak’s distinguished career. After earning both her bachelor’s and master’s degrees in art history at Penn State, she studied in Germany and in Middlebury College’s French Summer Language School before pursuing her doctorate at Yale, which she received in 1982. After a brief stint as curator of prints at a commercial gallery in Chicago, she joined the staff of the Getty Research Institute as an associate photo archivist. Although she wrote both a master’s thesis and doctoral dissertation in medieval art, Terpak had a passion for photography that was ignited during her undergraduate work at Penn State, when she took several photography courses with Gerald Lang and worked as an assistant in the photography lab.
In her current position, her primary responsibility is to build and publish the photographic collections in order to support visual research in the humanities. She has purchased thousands of photographs from the 19th and early 20th centuries documenting, among other subjects, China, the Ottoman Empire and ancient monuments in Greece. Her Ottoman Empire acquisitions were featured in an exhibition she curated, titled Framing the Asian Shore: Nineteenth-Century Photographs of the Ottoman Empire.
Terpak also devotes much of her time to acquiring individual items representing a wide range of media, including books, periodicals and archives. Besides acquiring material from dealers and collectors, she also pursues donations of material that fit within the collecting priorities of the Getty Research Institute.
Thanks to Terpak’s efforts, the Getty now has an impressive collection of publications and visual materials on the French colonies. Leading scholars from Australia, Europe, North Africa and the United States recently attended a workshop at the Getty Research Institute, titled “Walls of Algiers: Artistic, Cultural and Urban Forms in the Colonial and Postcolonial City,” which was organized by Terpak and Zeynep Çelik, professor of architecture at the New Jersey Institute of Technology. The scholars who participated in the workshop are currently preparing publishable papers based on the Getty Research Institute’s Algerian material.
Terpak says the guidance she received from the art history faculty at Penn State continues to influence her today. “The professors were accessible and often took a personal interest in counseling and guiding the students’ work. The methods course with Professor [Anthony] Cutler was particularly important for preparing me for graduate studies and Professor Jan van der Meulen’s method of having the graduate students work as a team has served me well throughout my career as a model for working with colleagues.”
Terpak also fondly remembers Eugenio Battisti’s “wonderfully stimulating” classes. “Although he was a highly respected Renaissance scholar, he more often than not taught courses in other fields, and his free spirit and willingness to consider topics that were not in the mainstream influenced me greatly.”
Battisti helped Terpak realize the importance of looking beyond one’s area of specialization. She encourages art history students to study foreign languages, even if they want to focus on American art. “Even here you want to study the foreign influences on American art and be able to think comparatively across several cultures,” she explains. Terpak also advises students to take risks: “Do not be afraid to take chances, but once you take that chance, work like the devil to succeed.”
Fenza and Kidd Honored as Alumni Fellows
Robert E. Fenza (’80 B.Ph.) and Charles “Chip” Kidd (’86 B.A. Graphic Design) were recently honored as the College of Arts and Architecture’s 2004 Alumni Fellows.
Fenza
is the executive vice president and chief operating officer for Liberty Property
Trust in Malvern, Pa., a self-administered, self-managed real estate investment
trust with more than 650 commercial and industrial properties. Fenza oversees
a comprehensive real estate development pipeline for the company, which is
ranked eighth on the National Real Estate Investors’ list of Top 25
Industrial Owners.
Always passionate about the environment, Fenza’s Penn State education included courses in landscape architecture, agriculture, business, real estate and engineering. Since joining Liberty Property Trust in 1984, he has guided the company’s growth to $5 billion in 20 markets. Thanks to his efforts, Liberty Property Trust has shown that good design attracts tenants, makes for attractive and productive workplaces, and generates a more profitable environment.
Fenza is very active in his community, holding leadership positions with the Pennsylvania/Jersey/Delaware (PENJERDEL) Council, the Charter High School for Architecture and Design, Quest Therapeutics and Chester County Hospital. He was one of the original board members of the Burnside Foundation, a group organized to preserve and protect an 18th-century Moravian Plantation that is now a working colonial farm. Fenza has also served on the board of the School in Rose Valley, a progressive primary school focused on the arts and the environment, and has been an active volunteer for the United Way and Habitat for Humanity.
Fenza, a 2002 recipient of the College of Arts and Architecture’s Alumni Achievement Award, recently established the college’s first Trustee Scholarship and is currently chairing the college’s Development Committee. He is a life member of the Penn State Alumni Association.
Kidd
is a graphic designer and editor-at-large for Alfred A. Knopf, a division
of Random House Publishing, in New York City. With the company since 1986,
his work has led the evolution of the book jacket from protective cover to
influential artistic statement.
Kidd is also a regular contributor to the Op-Ed Page of The New York Times, and since 1995 has been the design consultant for The Paris Review and The Yale Review. His work is the subject of a recent monograph, Chip Kidd, by Veronique Vienne (Yale University Press, 2003). Kidd’s own novel, The Cheese Monkeys, which follows a graphic design student’s experiences at a rural central Pennsylvania state university, was published in 2001. It was a national bestseller and a New York Times Notable Book of the Year. His most recent piece of fiction, The Learners, a seven-part novella also about a young graphic designer, was recently part of USATODAY.com’s Open Book Series. In addition to his fiction-writing, Kidd has authored, designed and/or edited several non-fiction books on the art of comics in America, written for many leading design magazines, and been featured in hundreds of articles in mainstream, trade and online publications.
A member of the Alliance Graphique Internationale since 1998, Kidd has been selected six times to participate in the American Center for Design’s prestigious 100 Show. In 1999, he received the International Center of Photography’s Award for Use of Photography in Graphic Design, and in 2001 he won a Silver Medal (with Chris Ware) from the Art Directors’ Club.
A Blue Band member during his years at Penn State, Kidd received an Alumni Achievement Award from the College of Arts and Architecture in 1996.
