Out & About
This article is from the archive of The New York Sun before the launch of its new website in 2022. The Sun has neither altered nor updated such articles but will seek to correct any errors, mis-categorizations or other problems introduced during transfer.
The art world is a pretty small world after all. Somehow, most of the people at the gala preview for the Armory Show last night knew each other, whether they were from Berlin, London, Los Angeles, Oklahoma City, or New York.
One artist in particular drew our attention: Trek Kelly of Venice, Calif. He is in the midst of a performance art piece, in which he wears a word of a 365-word poem on his chest daily. He chooses the next day’s word based on input collected on his Web site. Yesterday’s word was “death,” and in the airport and on the plane to New York, he drew some curious and disturbed eyes. So far the poem tells the story of a cat.
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Watching 1,700 Brown alumni in the midst of the thousands of specimens of fish, foul, reptile at the American Museum of Natural History last night, I had to ask: What are the characteristics of the Brown alumni?
The man dressed in a bear suit who greeted guests to the event, a kick-off for its “Boldly Brown” $1.4 billion campaign, offered one sort of answer (the Brown mascot is a bear).
A more exact and authoritative answer came from cell biologist Kenneth Miller,a Brown graduate, parent, and professor whose biology textbook is used by 35% of American high schools. “I’d characterize the Brown alumnus as un-characterizable.The novel curriculum attracts people who want to do their own thing.At Brown there’s an ideology, and that’s that students make their own education.”
The president of the university in Providence, Ruth Simmons, who after a day of meetings with alumni looked as energetic and bright as ever, offered these descriptions of her constituents: “very curious,” “independent-minded,” and “intellectually engaged well after their college years,” pointing to the packed lecture hall of graduates waiting to hear Professor Miller speak about “God, Darwin, and Design: The Battle for America’s Classrooms.”
And what of the Brown graduate who lives in New York? A university executive, Richard Spies, said, “There’s a special quality to New York. We can’t create this kind of Brown community anywhere else but on campus.”
After Mr. Miller’s talk, the crowd headed to a cocktail reception where the cocktail napkins featured the Brown seal. Guests spotted included 2004 graduate Sara Yerry, a NewYork City Teaching Fellow teaching bilingual kindergarten in Spanish Harlem; an oncologist for Johnson & Johnson, Michael Meyers, a graduate and parent of Elisabeth ’06, who is organizing a human rights film festival on campus, and recently admitted Hilarie ’10; campaign committee members Barbara Reisman and Tom Berry, and former Metropolitan Museum of Art president David McKinney, father of three graduates who expressed total confidence that Brown will meet its ambitious goal.
The campaign will go toward hiring 100 new faculty members, strengthening financial aid, and building the endowment (currently the smallest in the Ivy League).
