When was the last time you were at the art museum? Freshman orientation? Freshman orientation, 2003? Most students at Oberlin know the Allen Memorial Art Museum to some extent, but many say they seldom visit it. While everybody at Oberlin knows that the Conservatory is one of the best in the country, Oberlin College boasts an equally prestigious institution across Tappan Square: one that is perhaps underutilized, if not underappreciated, by students. Oberlin’s Allen Memorial Art Museum is generally regarded as having one of the nation’s top five university art collections.

To remedy this problem, the College has recently hired a new staff member. The Allen welcomed Dr. Colette Crossman as its new Curator of Academic Programs July 1, 2007. This position had been vacant since 2001. Previously grant-funded, the position has been revived due to support from the president’s office, which has committed to two and a half years of funding.

Crossman described her new job as a “merging of interests...unique in that it combines educational and curatorial roles.” She acts “as a liaison between the museum and faculty and students in order to integrate art collections into College and Conservatory classes.” The primary goal of the position is to forge interdisciplinary connections between the museum’s collection and the many different disciplines present in the college, involving more than just art history and studio art majors.

Crossman is currently working with a music theory class, a gender and women’s studies class and a biology class.

“Ideally, we would like every student to have a meaningful experience at the Allen during their time at Oberlin,” Crossman said. “After all, the Allen was primarily founded as a teaching institution.”

Crossman will also oversee students doing Winter Term projects at the Allen, an opportunity open to students of any major.

Her job, however, does not only entail working with students and professors in an academic setting. Crossman is organizing an after-hours program on October 4 that will include music and food as well as many art-related activities and a chance for busy students to visit the museum at a time when it is normally closed.

She also organized the current exhibition, Repeat Performances: Seriality and Systems Art since 1960 with an eye towards interdisciplinary studies. The works in this exhibit offer opportunities for evocative comparisons with mathematical systems as well as 20th century methods of musical composition. 

So far Crossman enjoys living in Oberlin, having moved here from Washington, D.C.

“I think small town life is refreshing,” she said, “but I’m pretty adaptable.”

After earning an undergraduate degree from Texas Christian University and a master’s degree from the Courtauld Institute of Art in London, she completed her doctorate earlier this year at the University of Maryland. She is a specialist in 18th and 19th century British art. Closely related thematically to some British works of that period is Crossman’s favorite work in the Allen’s collection: Honors Rendered to Raphael on His Deathbed, by the French painter Pierre-Nolasque Bergeret (1782-1863). 

“Portraying dying masters on their deathbeds was something 19th century artists liked to do,” says Crossman. “It is a way for artists of the 19th century to proclaim their own genius while showing their lineage going back to the Renaissance masters. In 19th century British art it was also a way to link the glory of the British Empire to the glory of the Italian Renaissance.”

In the work, Bergeret places Raphael’s late masterpiece, The Transfiguration, behind Raphael’s bed. Certainly one of the more thematically involved paintings in the Allen’s collection, it raises ever-interesting questions about the artist’s place in society and history, and treats the death of Raphael with a reverence that borders on the religious.

More students go to Wilder or the Feve for a study break, even though the Allen’s great collection is an easy walk across Tappan. During weekdays, one might find the museum practically empty. Crossman hopes, as Oberlin’s new Curator of Academic Programs, to be successful in bringing more students to the Allen — both for class and just for fun.