Western Washington University Libraries
Special Collections
Oral History Program

Sarah Clark-Langager

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This interview was conducted in two parts. The first on July 19, 2016 is
with Sarah Clark-Langager and takes place at her home in Lynden,
Washington. The interviewers are Barbara Miller, Professor of Art, and
Hafthor Yngvason, Director of the Western Gallery.
The second interview takes place in the Fine Arts building on the
Western Washington University campus. The interviewers are Tamara
Belts, Special Collections Manager, Western Libraries Heritage
Resources, Barbara Miller, Hafthor Yngvason and Sharron Antholt,
Professor Emerita of Art.
SCL: I was teaching at North Texas University, outside of Dallas, and
Craig and I decided that we wanted to get back to the Northwest. I was
seriously thinking about leaving fairly soon, and I got a telephone call
from Gene Vike who was the chair of the Art Department at that time.
He asked me if I was interested in applying for a job at Western -- that
they had built a new gallery, and that the job would involve not only
running the gallery but obviously taking part in helping with the Outdoor Sculpture Collection.
I already knew about the Outdoor Sculpture Collection. When I was in Seattle at the Seattle Art Museum
(SAM), I think the last time that I actually visited the sculpture collection was when the Contemporary
Art Council actually had a symposium at Western. The Contemporary Art Council, of which Virginia
Wright was a large part, was very much interested in the sculpture collection, and I distinctly remember
looking at the di Suvero and being just absolutely awed by it. Finally, I began to remember some of the
pieces that I had seen at that symposium. So I called Gene Vike back the next day and said, because of
the Outdoor Sculpture Collection and because it is a new gallery, I’m very much interested in applying.
So I applied.
It’s interesting that Larry Hanson, who was Sebastian’s counterpart, was the person who represented the
Art Department on the Art Acquisition Committee. And as you know at that time, the Art Acquisition
Committee was really made up of a Dean, Richard Francis (professor in the English Department), Larry
Hanson, and a couple of other people. So I came in 1988. I came for an interview, they offered me the
job, and Larry Hanson was still in the sculpture department.
BM: Was he curator to it?
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Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions
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SCL: Yes, he was the curator of the Outdoor Sculpture Collection. That’s what they called him on the
Art Acquisition Committee.
BM: And so was there like a Western Gallery? Wasn’t it –
SCL: The Western Gallery was in the [Fine Arts] building and it was up on the second floor. It occupied
the space that now is the lecture room and the slide library, that’s where the Western Gallery was.
BM: Oh, so 238 plus the slide library. Oh, okay.
SCL: That’s where the Western Gallery originally was. Then downstairs where the gallery is, I would
say part of the storage area of the gallery was part of the [Fine Arts] building, and that’s where, what they
called Industrial Arts was. Industrial Arts went over to the [Ross Engineering Technology] Building
(ET) when that was built. So the new part of the gallery was actually a little bit of the storage area and
then the new exhibition space. So the Art Department when they realized that finally Industrial Arts was
going to be in this new building, they definitely put on a campaign to get a new gallery space to add to the
Fine Arts building. That was in 1988, and the gallery was just being finished when I got there. I mean,
they were still doing construction. I came in the fall, and we did not have the first exhibition until January
of 1989.
But getting back to Larry Hanson, what’s interesting about him was that he was part of the Seattle-King
County Arts Commission’s Earthworks Symposium (1979). So he had a connection to people like Nancy
Holt and Robert Morris, because he essentially met up with them again at the Earthworks Symposium.
Both Morris and Holt had already done their works at Western in the 1970s.
HY: Was that in 1987?
SCL: In 1987 was the earthworks symposium. [WWU’s Site Specific Symposium, organized by Larry
Hanson, with artists: Aycock, Trakas and McCafferty].
SCL: Anyway, the Seattle Earthworks Symposium decided that there had to be at least one
representative from the Northwest and Larry Hanson was chosen to be the representative. So that put him
in the spotlight in the Earthworks Symposium, and certainly put a spotlight again on the sculpture that
was at Western. So when I came in 1988, Larry was there to assist me to, you know, about the sculpture
collection, etc., but he bowed out and let me take on the responsibility. But he was always a very good
colleague, very much so.
Anyway, so when I arrived, I knew that I was responsible for exhibitions in the gallery, and I was
responsible for the Outdoor Sculpture Collection, but there was no history whatsoever written about what
exhibitions had actually occurred in the gallery. There was nothing on the portable collections. The only
information on the Outdoor Sculpture Collection was in the Art Acquisition Committee minutes that
Richard Francis, thank god, had kept very diligent notes on. So I put the interns to work, and I made
them read all the newspapers, anything in the library that told about what had been happening at the
university. They gradually made a long list of all the exhibitions they could find that had occurred since
the 1930s. So I then had a sense of what, you know, the gallery had done and what the gallery had not
done.
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BM: So Western Gallery started in the 1930s?
SCL: I would say [1938], something like that.
BM: I had no idea it had that history.
SCL: It was first called the Studio Gallery. There’s a brochure on Helen Loggie that the Western Gallery
did, and the introduction tells basically the history of the gallery. Anyway, Helen Loggie, the famous
Bellingham printmaker, was extremely helpful in helping with the gallery in terms of exhibitions.
So there is a file, Hafthor, somewhere in your office that says “history gallery,” and there should be a long
list there of all of the exhibitions that ever occurred.
HY: I found it.
SCL: Yes. So that gave me a sense of what I didn’t want to repeat and what I wanted to do. Then in
terms of the collection, the storage area was jam packed with student work that was leftover from
exhibitions, and nobody knew what to do with it (or leftover in the halls), and they all said, just put it in
the Western Gallery. So what I did was I went to the archives and I went to the Art Department boxes,
and I went through every scrap of paper I could find, trying to find a sales slip or something that would
give me a clue really as to what was a part of the collection or where it had come from. So I gradually
began to weed out the student art that was leftover and what really was supposedly part of our collection.
Then I gradually realized that nobody knew what I was supposed to do. Coming from a museum
background, I realized that they didn’t realize that there were such things as Art Acquisition Committees,
and that when a gift was given to the gallery that you had to go through certain procedures, etc. Then
also, I figured out that all the different colleges on campus were just willy-nilly accepting things, and they
had no idea that there was supposed to be a university database, so that if somebody called me up and
said, Where’s the Rembrandt? And I said, Duh...
BM: Wish we had that.
SCL: I would have to say, gee, I didn’t realize we had a Rembrandt. Where’s the Rembrandt?
(Laughter) Anyway, so I began to put together procedures of how things should really work, and then I
began to literally indoctrinate everybody. I would work with the Dean and say, this is how we are
supposed to be operating. I would go to the Foundation and I would say, no, you can’t just accept the
flower painting. It has got to go through the committee, etc. Then I began working with the campus -the mapping out of the new campus. I sat on that particular master plan committee [Master Plan Advisory
Group], and I learned very quickly that I had to literally defend the sculpture collection.
I remember standing up one day and saying, these are not tinker toys. They cannot be moved around
campus just to any other place. I think they were talking about moving the di Suvero, and I just, ah, fell
over backwards. So I became very much a part of the [Master Plan Advisory Group]. And as I said, my
job really was to defend the sculpture collection. I think I told you the last time we met, that they really
wanted me in the last mapping out of the master plan -- they wanted me to put into the master plan sites
for sculpture. In other words, go ahead and designate that this spot over here and this spot over here were
going to... And I refused to do that. I just said, no, that’s not how we’re going to operate in terms of
artists coming to campus and choosing sites.
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I would say that it was a huge learning curve. It wasn’t a learning curve in terms of what to do with the
sculpture or how to do exhibitions, but it was a learning curve in terms of how to deal with all these
people on campus who didn’t know anything about how a university gallery should operate or how artists
worked within the campus.
BM: So it was more of an educational curve -- kind of get people to understand what the sculpture
collection was -- what it could be, how it interacted with the rest of the university.
SCL: Right; and it was critical for the master plan committee to gradually understand that it wasn’t just
that they were planning where buildings were going, they had to literally think about the landscaping
elements, buildings, and sculpture collection, you know, the bigger picture.
BM: So what was your first show?
SCL: It was Milton Avery [which] had already been selected by Robert Sylvester who was the Dean
under whom I came. He had chosen the show, Milton Avery: Progressive Images (January 9 – February
17, 1989) which was a very good show done by the Boise Art Museum.
BM: So it came all the way over.
SCL: Yes.
BM: Well that’s good. So, you came here, there was nothing in place –
SCL: Nothing in place.
BM: -- no documentation about anything. You had to basically start from square one.
SCL: Right. There were no files on any of the art objects. Gradually I began to build up files for the
sculpture collection. As I say, I went through all the Art Acquisition Committee minutes and Xeroxed
anything I could find – nobody had a routine, or had any idea that certain things had to be done. So that’s
when I got Patricia Leavengood [Art Conservation Service] a conservator in Seattle to come up, and we
established this routine of what had to be done absolutely every year. But still with the charges on the
maintenance, there still was not enough money really to do absolutely everything. So I went to the
provost that first year when finally we had this routine. I went to the provost, and he said that he would
give -- actually it was DeLorme, the editor of this book, Perspectives on Excellence -- he would give
$10,000 towards bringing the collection back up, you know, doing what we were supposed to be doing in
terms of routine and any special work, which really helped tremendously. I think that was probably the
first time that any recognition was given to the sculpture collection, in terms that it had needed
maintenance, continual maintenance. But there always was a problem and finally -- I think this was in the
1990s sometime, whenever President Karen Morse first got here [1993], that was the first time that they
put into the university budget that there was going to be some funding for maintenance of the Outdoor
Sculpture Collection. The Board of Trustees said that it should be in the university budget.
BM: And did it always stay at $10,000, or did it eventually get –

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SCL: No, it stayed at $10,000, and then Dean Dan Guyette and the Vice President for Business and
Financial Affairs, Rich van den Hul, said that they would chip in a certain amount of money. But the
problem has always been that of course over time, everything is aging, so you spend, you know,
practically the entire budget on conservation of one particular piece.
BM: Right. So when they chipped in, did it substantively go up, or was it just an ad hoc?
SCL: Yes. Each one of them chipped in $15,000, so it went up to $30,000.
HY: [And it just stayed there]. Tell us more about the gallery -- your vision, direction, and what kind of
exhibitions you did?
SCL: Well once I figured out what exhibitions had occurred and what the collection supposedly was, I
decided that really what we needed to do was to focus more on our national and international exhibition
schedule, that I really did not want to -- I didn’t want to have student shows, I didn’t want to concentrate
on faculty shows. I really wanted to bring in work that the students were not able to see in Bellingham. I
tried not to overlap with anything that was going on in Seattle or in Vancouver because I figured the
students could at least get to those particular places, if they would go. So I just began talking to people
across the United States. You know a curator in one particular museum, and you just call and say, what
exhibitions are you planning? And then I worked a lot with Independent Curators Incorporated, and just
gradually brought in exhibitions from the national and international scene. And of course always, you
know, the budget was, well, I can’t spend more than $5,000 (laughter) on an exhibition, and of course
these types of exhibitions the rental fees are out of sight.
BM: And the shipping fees are expensive too.
SCL: Yes. So that’s when I really began to talk about how there should be some sort of endowment for
exhibitions at the gallery. And Miriam Mathes was the -- well, who was she? She was the Children’s
Librarian at Wilson Library and she of course had retired numerous years ago (1971), and she came back
for a visit. The Foundation asked me if I would give her a tour of the Western Gallery, whatever the
exhibition was. I didn’t know her from Adam, and she came, and I forget what the show was. I think it
was the African-American show from the Smithsonian.1 I think that’s what it was. Anyway, I gave her a
tour, and very soon after that she gave money to the gallery for an endowment, just out of the blue.
HY: That is wonderful.
SCL: So that is what gave us more money, other than the measly budget we were getting from the
college to do exhibitions.
BM: And is that endowment still there?
SCL: Yes.

1

African-American artists, 1880-1987: selections from the Evans-Tibbs Collection, exhibited at the Western
Gallery, September 28-November 1992].
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BM: What’s the endowment called?
SCL: It’s named after her husband [Homer Mathes], but it’s the Mathes Endowment.
HY: So, most of the exhibitions were traveling exhibitions with national or international artists.
SC: Right.
HY: Did you set some direction beyond that, what kind of –
SCL: Not really. I tried to keep a healthy mix. I wanted sculpture, I wanted painting, I wanted works on
paper. So I tried to vary the media. Also I was very concerned that it would be a gallery space where
other students, students other than art students, would come to the gallery. So I spent a lot of time going
to Deans’ meetings where they gave me five minutes to say what we were doing at the gallery and how it
could possibly relate to subjects other than art. I began to have Wednesday Gallery Tours where I would
invite faculty from other colleges to come in and talk about the art. They always said, well, I don’t know
anything about art. And I would say, but you have a particular perspective that is important to understand
the art that’s in the gallery, and I’ll be right there with you to, you know, talk with you, etc. They really
enjoyed doing it. Those were very popular for a while.
Then I would always send out notices. If it was an exhibition that dealt with environmental things, I
would always send notices out to the pertinent Dean or the pertinent college about this exhibition, and
certainly to faculty that I knew that this would be an exhibition they would want to bring their students to.
I constantly gave tours because I believe very strongly that the gallery definitely should be oriented to the
entire faculty and students, rather than just to the Art Department.
Then of course the Washington Art Consortium was very important, because Western was a founding
member of the consortium, and I knew about the collections. I had been at the Seattle Art Museum when
the first one was formed. So I knew about the importance of the collections, and I intentionally after
showing one of the consortium collections, it must have been the American Works on Paper one, I
intentionally lobbied to keep the collection at Western. And gradually tried -- I didn’t really have to
persuade that many people, but just made a good argument that it would be good to have them in one
place and that we had the possibility of getting proper racks, etc., for storage for them. Because for
instance the American Works on Paper were in these hideous orange crates for just years on end. You
can just imagine what was inside those large old crates. We finally made the argument and the
consortium accepted the fact that they would pay for racks in storage. But I always felt and it’s true that
Western is sort of the low man on the totem pole in terms of the consortium. Because here is the large
Seattle Art Museum, and the Tacoma Art Museum, and the Henry Gallery etc., and here we were, you
know, two people on staff compared to these mega places. The consortium really gave us prestige.
People would find out about the consortium collections, and they would begin to associate it with
Western.
BM: So how did the consortium collection, how did that all form? I mean, how did we get the works?
Where were the works from?
SCL: Virginia Wright went to the NEA with a grant idea of getting institutions to come together so that
there could be this portable collection that went around the state. The NEA gave her the grant with the
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condition that she would match it, so that is how the Works on Paper Collection came together. She asked
Richard Bellamy, who was an art dealer at the time to be an advisor. She probably had other advisors too.
Then there was a representative from each of the institutions coming together to form the consortium and
they are the ones who selected the works.
BM: And so through Richard Bellamy, he was a New York art dealer who had a lot to do with pop art.
SCL: He was an advisor, so he and [Jinny] would select the work or select let’s say, a couple of
examples by Richard Serra and say, you know, we think this is the best one. Then they would bring those
examples to the committee of consortium members and have a discussion, and then they would decide
which Richard Serra to buy.
BM: Oh wow. So that all came about because of the NEA grant –
SC: Right.
BM: -- and Wright matching the funds to buy this portable art collection that is now prints, photography,
and some paintings?
HY: It’s prints and drawings, right?
SCL: Yes, prints and drawings.
BM: Prints, drawings, and photography?
SCL: Photography?
HY: No, photography came as a separate collection, right?
SCL: Which one?
HY: The Photography Collection came separate.
SCL: Yes, that was -- so the first one was American Works on Paper. Once they formed it, it went on a
tour under the American Federation of Arts. It went all over. Then it came back and was housed at
WSU. When I got to Western, I knew it was at WSU, so I, you know, had an exhibition and told WSU
I’d be more than happy to keep it. (Laughter) Then the Photography Collection a couple of years later,
again in the what, late 1970s, early 1980s, was formed, and that was formed essentially in the same way.
BM: With Wright –
SCL: With a grant and with Virginia Wright matching.
BM: Oh wow.
HY: And who selected that?
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SCL: The curator at the Whatcom Museum and a curator from the Portland Art Museum selected the
work. Rod Slemmons was at the Whatcom Museum and went on to become the curator of photography at
the Seattle Art Museum, and then he went off to Chicago.
BM: And that was in what year?
SCL: I’d have to go look. But I’m going to say late 1970s, early 1980s.
BM: Before you came.
SCL: Yes.
BM: Okay.
SCL: And then it was not until the 1990s that the Aiken Collection, which was a private collection was
offered to the consortium and we accepted that collection.
Then, of course in 2010 or whenever it was, 2009, 2010, that’s when Safeco Corporation decided that
they were going to essentially deaccession or get rid of their collection. The curator of the Safeco
Collection was of course extremely disturbed about that, so she called and said, what about the idea of
giving the Safeco Collection to the consortium, meaning that the collection could stay together but it
could be dispersed among the seven institutions. We essentially said, it’s a great idea, but we only collect
works on paper. So there was a committee formed. I was on that committee and the director at the time
at the Seattle Art Museum was on that committee, and Chris Bruce [WSU], so we formed a Safeco Works
on Paper Collection. Then we said, what about the idea of -- if you still have work in the collection -paintings and sculptures and glasswork, etc., what if we accepted that collection but it would be dispersed
among the seven institutions, so that’s what we did.
So that’s the work that you -- the greatest part of the work is the work that you see in the PAC galleries.
BM: And so was there a budget associated with Western maintaining that, or did you do it out of your
own pocket?
SCL: I was on the committee with the director of the Tacoma Art Museum, and we said to Safeco, we
will accept the work IF you give us monies to disperse the collection to the seven institutions and IF you
will give us monies to help conserve the work that we, the institutions, are taking. Safeco said that they
would.
HY: That is very smart; tell me about the collections in the Western Gallery? What was your direction in
building it?
SCL: Well, primarily when I got there, it was just prints and drawings. I said, well that seems to me
what is already in the collection, and so we probably should take that approach plus there was, you know,
there was no place to really store them. So I thought prints and drawings are going to be the easiest to
store. I had to think about storage. There certainly were some paintings already in the collection, but I
tried to be very practical. Then I had to be in charge also, or I put myself in charge of the other works that
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were coming to the other colleges [on campus], because people didn’t know what to do. So I, I’m going
to whisper this, I essentially named myself as the –
BM: Do you want me to push pause? (Laughter)
HY: No, let’s hear this.
SCL: -- curator of the University Collections, because nobody else was going to do it. I mean, they
didn’t even know that they should be doing it. I just assumed this role. I kid you not. I assumed this role!
BM: I believe it! I believe it!
SCL: And I said to the different colleges, if you want this particular work that Mrs. Jones is giving you,
you are going to have to be responsible for it. It is not going to come back to the Western Gallery. So,
you know, again you had to educate them. That is why the University Collections are very diverse. But
the Western Gallery, its unique collections, really were prints and drawings, -- there was already some
sculpture in the collection, and of course later the Leese Collection.
Vera Leese. She had this wonderful collection and she invited me to come see her, and I used to go see
her at least once a week. She and her husband Al were delightful, could talk on any art subject known to
man. Over the years, I just built up this wonderful relationship with them. Her daughter, Marian, called
me one day and said that her mother had died and that she had decided -- and her mother had given her
the art collection, but she decided that it really should come to the Western Gallery.
BM: Oh wow.
SCL: So it was the Leese Collection that allowed us to expand beyond just prints and drawings and it
was important, again, to keep that Leese Collection all together.
HY: And then the Safeco, more paintings were added.
SCL: Right. Now Safeco, this is –
BM: What year was the Safeco?
SCL: Safeco was like 2010.
BM: Oh, very recent.
SCL: The consortium decided that now that they had formed their own Safeco Works on Paper
Collection that what we needed to do with the other Safeco Collections was to have sort of like an NFL
draw. There was a long list and images of everything in the Safeco Collection, and we all studied the list,
and then we put all our names into a hat, it was a computer drawing, and it came out that the Seattle Art
Museum had the first draw and the Western Gallery had the last draw. (Laughter)
HY: But it flowed in a circle -9
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SCL: And so we would go in a circle. I made a list of my priorities, of what I really wanted for my first
go-around. It was all done over the telephone. So you could hear people sighing, or you could hear
people whispering, like, what should I choose now? My heart was just going like this. Anyway, we got
everything we wanted, with the exception of one work.
BM: What was that?
SCL: That was a Roger Shimomura painting that WSU got. [But otherwise] we got every single one.
HY: How did you select those paintings?
SCL: Well, I knew a lot -- well, having been in the Northwest, I knew a lot of the artists, and so I knew
which were the most important artists, there are a lot of artists you have never heard of. But for example,
with the Seattle Art Museum, they already had three or four Alden Masons, so they didn’t necessarily
want an Alden Mason, which gave us a chance to get the Alden Mason, or whatever artist. Knowing my
Northwest art history, I could really pinpoint what I thought were the ones to accept. But before we had
this NFL draw, I went to the Dean, Dan Guyette, and said, If you want Western to come out on top here,
you’ve got to do something, because there is no place to store these big works. That’s when he and I
decided that okay what we would do would be to take the foyers over in the PAC and make them into
galleries. That was the big plan, so with that plan in mind, of course no money whatsoever, Dan told me
to go ahead and I could go choose whatever I wanted to in this NFL draw. So I just went to town
(laughter), choosing what I thought would be good and not worrying about whether it was the biggest
thing or smallest or where I was going to store it or anything like that. We came out very well. Plus as I
said then, there was a formula set up that depending upon how many works you got, there was a certain
amount of money that would follow those works. So there is in our Foundation account, there is the
Safeco Conservation Fund.
BM: And they’re still on the hook for that money now, for the conservation?
SCL: No. We already have that money -- that money’s already in the Foundation.
BM: Oh, I see.
SCL: Yes. That’s when the Foundation went to, me not knowing it, that’s when they went to Virginia
Wright, and said, Would you give monies to renovate these galleries? Because they knew that she was
very much oriented towards the consortium and what the consortium had been doing and knew about the
Safeco gift, etc. We already had these wonderful Alexander Calder tapestries in one of the PAC foyers,
and she was very much interested in that story of, you know, again, a fluke that we got them. So she gave
the monies to renovate the galleries and to frame the tapestries, so that’s how we could put up the works.
BM: I’ve never seen those tapestries.
SCL: The Calder tapestries?
HY: Go and see them.
BM: Yes.
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HY: They are worth it, yes.
BM: Where are they? In the –
SCL: They are in one of the lobbies of the PAC. If you go in the PAC and turn to the right, and walk far
right, past the Zervas video, you go in one gallery and then there is another gallery over to the left. That’s
probably the one that people use as an exit when they come out of the performance hall.
BM: I’ll have to look, I’ve never seen them.
SCL: Those came by a fluke. Susan Sollins2 called me one day and we had a nice chat. She said, you
know, there’s this donor that I know and he has these Alexander Calder tapestries that he would like to
give to an institution, and I just keep thinking about the sculpture collection at Western. Would you be
interested in these tapestries? I said, why of course, Susan! I had no idea who this donor was, absolutely
no clue whatsoever. So she went back [to the donor] and she honestly said, this is the place where they
should be.
HY: Tell me more about creating the portable collection. After getting the Leese collection did you start
deliberately collecting more paintings? Or did you stay with Works on Paper?
SCL: I would say that I probably still thought that the Works on Paper Collection the most important,
because the paintings were a little bit of European here, one or two 19th century there. It was just spread
out, it was way too random. I felt that there was a better chance of filling in the Works on Paper
Collection and really making it a solid collection, rather than trying to just have, you know, have a little
bit of everything.
HY: So the Works on Paper -- the paintings are, right, that they are more Northwestern?
SCL: Yes, yes.
HY: But the Paper Collection is –
SCL: American, Asian works, European...
BM: It’s a real mix, yes. I’ve been through all the paper collection, Works on Paper. I haven’t been
through the sculpture collection or -- But we went through the whole paper collection that one time –
SC: For a show.
BM: Yes, everything we went through. (Laughter)
SCL: Yes.

2

Susan Sollins was the director of Independent Curators Incorporated with whom I had dealt with a lot with the
exhibitions. She had on numerous occasions asked me to write letters when they were applying for grants to the
NEA, and I would write letters saying how wonderful Independent Curators Incorporated was.
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BM: So I’m pretty familiar with the paper. Tell us about the Chair Collection, how did that come about?
SCL: That’s another one of those interesting stories. I had no clue that the university had a Chair
Collection, no clue whatsoever. I finally met Dorothy Ramsland, who was the person who was in charge
of the Home Economics Department before they merged that department into the Design and Industrial
Design. So I met her and she told me that there was a Chair Collection. I said, Now, Dorothy, where is
it?
She said that she had a small budget, and every year -- she particularly liked going to Scandinavian
countries. So every year she would take this small budget and go to Europe and buy. It could be
glasswork, a chair, things that students needed to see as interior decorators; what they needed to see and
know about design. She decided that she was going to focus on chairs.
I forgot who was the provost at the time [DeLorme] but the administration decided that they were going
to merge the Home Economics Department into the Design and Industrial Design Departments3. One day
I hear via rumor that they are getting rid of the Chair Collection. So I called up Dorothy Ramsland and I
said, Where is the Chair Collection? She said, It is in the attic of Old Main. (Laughter) I found out how
to get to the attic of Old Main, and I kid you –
BM: That’s a feat.
SCL: I kid you not, the room probably was no bigger than this porch, and it was jammed with all these
chairs. Mary McIntyre was the Assistant Vice Provost, and she was from the Art Department. I went to
Mary McIntyre [Gorrell] and I said, I’ve heard via a rumor that you are going to get rid of the Chair
Collection. Do you realize how important this Chair Collection is? I told her about it and said, the
Western Gallery will take the Chair Collection. Do not get rid of it! Do not sell it! There was some
discussion about, still, selling it. I said, well, do you know to whom you would sell it, or do you know to
whom you would give it? I called up Patterson Sims at the Seattle Art Museum, and I said, Patterson, I
want you to come -- he was a curator. I said, Patterson, I want you to come and look at this Chair
Collection, and you tell me whether the Seattle Art Museum would take this Chair Collection or not. He
came up, and we crawled through the attic, and he thought it was a wonderful collection. And he said, if
offered to the Seattle Art Museum, he certainly would take it. So I said to myself, no. He knew I was –
BM: Fishing.
SCL: -- fishing. So you know, I went and said, the Western Gallery wants this Chair Collection. We
will use it as a study collection. It has always been a study collection. They said, okay, fine, but you will
have to take everything else that was in the Home Economic department. I said, okay.
Oh my lord, people! (Laughter) We had stacks of dishes, towels, we had, I mean, everything known to
man. Ramsland had built up a department where you went into the kitchen, and this is how you designed
a kitchen, this is how you designed a living room, etc.
I said, there is no way I can accept it. I mean, it just is beyond the Western Gallery. What about the
possibility, not to step on anyone’s toes, [that] we just store all this stuff for about five years until the
3

Editors note: Home Economics program enrollment was suspended effective, Winter 1992.
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clamor subsides (because all the graduates of the department of Home Economics were livid that the
department was folding)? I said, let’s just store all this stuff for five years and let everything calm down,
and then we will disperse with it. That’s when I persuaded the university that we could have our first
auction. They’d never had an auction before (laughter). I called it the bake sale, because it was like a
bake sale. So I called in various people in town who knew about antiques, dishware, etc., and they helped
me price everything. We put everything in the Western Gallery, and we advertised. We literally had to
have [police officers] at the front door because there were so many people who were trying to crash the
gallery to get to this auction (laughter).
BM: So you did deaccession something (laughter)?
SCL: So, we did. We got rid of all that.
HY: And did you get rid of the duplicate chairs or things like that?
SCL: Yes, we did. Also by that time, I had figured out what was all the student art and all the art that the
Western Gallery should really have. I went to the assistant attorney general and said, I want to
deaccession. First of all, I’m going to write to every student (if I could find the student). If I want to also
deaccession something that has come into the collection that really just should not be in the collection,
I’m going to write that particular collector and tell them that we would like to deaccession, and that we
were having this auction, and it would benefit the gallery. A lot of the students said, keep it, use it in the
auction and so did the collectors. So I went to the assistant attorney general -- who looked at every one of
those files on who the donor was and who the student was etc., and gave me permission to deaccession
them. So we put them in the auction and sold a lot of the leftover student work that was in the gallery.
BM: So you have to go up to the Assistant Attorney General to deaccession?
SCL: [Yes]. And then we had a second auction when we were putting the Chair Collection in the back
room. I said, you know, we still have a lot of duplicates. So I went to the business office again and said,
I’d like to have another auction because we’ve got duplicate chairs we would like to sell. Plus we had the
wonderful orange crates from the consortium that people were just dying to buy and just a lot of stuff like
that. Old frames, we had taken all of the works -- the Leese Collection were in all these old frames and,
you know, terrible backing, etc. One summer, interns and I, spent the entire summer taking everything
out, the Leese works out of the frames, etc. It was a mixed bag auction. But again, people loved it.
BM: Was that in the early 2000s? I think I vaguely remember that.
SCL: You vaguely remember that. Yes, probably.
BM: Okay. Was Rosalie King part of the Industrial, the Interior Design?
SCL: Yes.
BM: Okay. So that’s that whole legacy there.
SCL: Yes.
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BM: Okay. And so, did you ever replace the chairs that were stolen?
SCL: No. But we did replace -- what did we replace? The Matta, the Roberto Matta. What did we do?
I called up Knoll, and I think they sent us -- we were missing a section, and I think they sent us a section
for that.
BM: So how many chairs were stolen?
SCL: Let’s see. The Wassily chair was stolen. And then one of the chairs -- what’s the name of that
designer who did the bird chair and -- a very important chair.
BM: Bird chair.
SCL: Yes, bird chair. Swan chair, bird chair.
HY: Is it Jacobsen?
SCL: Yes, Arne Jacobsen.
HY: This is a very specific with the Matta there was one piece missing and you had it redone.
SCL: Right.
HY: Was cloth put on it?
SCL: Yes.
HY: Okay. So, basically in the Matta Collection, everything is there.
SCL: Right. That one piece that we had to -- that was stolen, and so we had to go to [Knoll], and they
sent me that one section. Now, whether they -- did we put cloth on it? I’d have to go look, to stare at it to
see if I remember.
HY: Okay.
SCL: It’s not in the files? It doesn’t say anything in the files?
HY: I have to look for it.
SCL: Yes, okay.
BM: So how many chairs do we have?
SCL: How many chairs do we have? 50?
HY: 65?
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SCL: 65?
BM: There’s that many?
SCL: Oh, yes.
BM: Wow, oh wow. And so, like –
SCL: Because see, you know, there’s the chair room, but then there’s chairs still in the basement.
BM: I didn’t know that.
HY: They have been all brought out.
SCL: Good.
HY: I put them on exhibition at the library [they] created a space there.
SCL: Oh, good. I went to the library and said, how would you like to hang all the chairs on the wall?
(Laughter)
BM: That would be good.
SCL: They weren’t up for it.
BM: And so, there were only about four or five chairs that were stolen then.
SCL: I would say three.
BM: Three chairs?
SCL: Yes.
BM: And that’s the only theft that ever happened in the –
SCL: Yes. Now there were days when Paul and I couldn’t find things. And I’d say, just relax, Paul,
we’ll find it. I swear we’ll find it. (Laughter)
HY: Now, what are the other big issues you should explore? You know, highlights of your career? What
are the exhibitions that you find most memorable and successful in some way or other?
SCL: Oh, gosh. I would say the highlight of my career was definitely working with the artists in the
Outdoor Sculpture Collection. My focus has always been towards sculpture. So you know, my great love
was the sculpture collection, and of course my greatest worry was the sculpture collection, biggest
headache. But I thoroughly enjoyed being the Director of the [Western] Gallery, in choosing exhibitions,
and definitely trying to relate those exhibitions to the campus at large. I think that was the biggest
challenge, trying to get the campus oriented to the gallery.
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HY: And were there exhibitions that you were particularly proud to have [brought in]?
SCL: I think probably -- I would say the Noguchi exhibition that we did, we have a very strong
relationship with the Noguchi Foundation. So they offered their particular show on The Bollinger Years
when Noguchi was traveling. I decided that what I would do would be to pair it with an exhibition that I
would put together, particularly having to do with Noguchi and dance. I remember that exhibition very
well.
I’m very proud that we did the Northwest, first ever, environmental art exhibition, focused on
environmental art, artists in the Northwest, the one that’s called Critical Messages.4 I’m very proud of
that one.
BM: When was that –
SCL: That was in about 2010, I think. I paired up with William Dietrich, who was in environmental
sciences. I went to him and said I know nothing about what are the most critical issues in the
environment, but would you give me ten of the most important issues that you think are important. He
gave me the ten, and then I did an exhibition where I tried to find artists who were dealing with those ten
issues. I would always ask the artist, I would call and say, I’m interested in your work. This is what I
think. Am I pushing it too far? I only had one artist who said, I think you’re pushing it too far.
Everybody else said I was right on the money. So it was the first time that people had concentrated -- that
any attention had been brought to artists in the northwest dealing with these environmental issues.
BM: When was the Noguchi exhibition? Because it would be interesting because you’re going to get the
Noguchi painted, it would be interesting to have that.
SCL: Oh boy. You know, Michiko Yusa, who was in, who is still in the department of [Modern and
Classical] Languages, she used to do every spring -- Japan Week, where she would concentrate on Japan.
She came to me and she said, Well, Sarah, we ought to concentrate on Noguchi. So we did this
symposium on Noguchi5 and various people wrote essays. I elaborated on what I’d written in the
sculpture book on Noguchi. I re-read that essay again today, Barbara, and I’m convinced that you could
go to the Ibsen Nelsen files in the archives and find some interesting information that you were interested
in.
BM: Yes.
HY: Tell me -- I heard that an exhibition of the [Tibetan monks constructing a sand mandala] that got
11,000 guests in [six] days [May 15-20, 2000].
SCL: Yes, true.

4

Critical messages: contemporary Northwest artists on the environment, exhibit held at the Western Gallery, April
12 – May 29, 2010.
5
Isamu Noguchi and Skyviewing Sculpture, symposium and guest lectures held as part of Japan Week 2003, April
28 – May 1, 2003. Proceedings published under this title in 2004.
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HY: Can you tell us about all of that?
SCL: Let’s see, how did that come? Anyway, a Dean, Bert Van Boer, brought it to my attention and said,
You know, I think this would be wonderful for Western. And so I just called up and said, we would be
interested in you coming to Western and being in the gallery. They agreed to do so. They told Paul
[Brower] exactly what they needed -- a big pedestal where they could do the sand mandala. We had this
very formal opening. We had ropes around the mandala where they were working.
End of Part One

Insert provide by Sarah Clark-Langager
Background on Western Gallery
Studio Gallery (now called Western Gallery) started in the Thirties when there was a nationwide
movement calling for more public spaces (versus private collections) where people could see art. The
Studio Gallery was in Old Main and then [the Campus Elementary School]. When the Art-Technology
building was opened in the Fifties (1950), the art gallery became known as the Western Gallery. It was
located on the second floor, about where the lecture hall and slide library are now. In the Fifties at the
beginning of the gallery, Helen Loggie, well-known printmaker, suggested print shows, such as John
Sloan, and that is how we got our wonderful Sloan prints in the collection. Various faculty members took
on the job of part-time director. Larry Hanson (sculptor) had the longest directorship and put the gallery
on the regional map. A good number of small-scale sculptures and drawings in the Western Gallery
collection came from an annual juried show which he did for ten years or more. Larry also did shows
borrowing from Seattle collectors, including Virginia Wright. When I was Associate Curator at Seattle
Art Museum (SAM) in the seventies, I remember meeting Gene Vike, chair, in Seattle and helping him
with suggestions of good artists. He ended up doing a show of seven Seattle artists and I got to see the old
gallery for the first time. Also during the Seventies the SAM head curator and myself took trips to WWU
to see the sculpture collection – Jinny must have alerted us to one of her projects. The Contemporary Art
Council at SAM had a critic’s symposium (Robert Hughes, Milton Kramer, [No, Hilton Kramer!] a critic
from S.F., and M. Kangas in Seattle) at WWU and we all walked the campus.

The new Western Gallery
Craig and I left NYC in mid-Eighties to head back to NW. We stopped off in Texas where I taught, was
director of North Texas University Gallery, and finished my dissertation. Gene Vike called me and asked
if I would like to apply for the directorship of the new Western Gallery, which was being
constructed/added on to the Art building; part of the first-ever full time job was also to take care of the
sculpture collection.

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1988-2014
I started the job in the fall of 1988; the building did not open to the public until January 1989 when we
presented a (traveling) Milton Avery show. In the beginning there was no time for grand visions as I had
to dig deep in the archives to figure out the history of the gallery and sculpture collection and to construct
what seemed to be a gallery collection of prints and drawings among a lot of student work “left” in
gallery storage. There also were the 50+ paintings by Harold Wahl, which Gene Vike accepted because
he knew the family and these works still take up a lot of room; I never would have accepted them! The
only vision I had was to make the new gallery an all-university gallery, not a departmental gallery.
I essentially wrote my own job description. Based on my numerous museum jobs, I knew what I had to
do. I “appointed myself” to give focus and context to the gallery collection, sculpture collection and to try
to rein in the activities of other colleges accepting art gifts with no forethought. Over time – in the
Nineties- I wrote an operations/procedural manual for the gallery, which was approved by the Assistant
Attorney General and President Morse.6
Knowing the legacy of Washington Art Consortium (WAC) and its two collections at that time –
American Works on Paper and Photography [in the] 70s- I intentionally requested to store these two
collections as I knew it would bring us prestige. People did associate WAC with WWU. I kept WAC
alive (acting as president numerous times) until WAC got its 501c3 around 2000. (Ask Willow for copies
of brochures, which give history of WAC.7 )
The exhibitions for the most part focused on national and international art, just like the sculpture
collection. To get the full range of shows, go to Special Collections and ask Tamara Belts to see the
gallery media books8 which gives information on every show done from 1988-2014. Based on the
university’s goal of diversity, I did a lot of “multi-cultural” shows during the Nineties. In 2007 I took a
traveling show of Japanese textiles called “Wearing Propaganda”. Julia Sapin, Seiko Atsuta Purdue, and I
paired it with our own co-curated show –“Fabric of Identity.” From time to time, I would include one or
two art department faculty in shows I curated and both Seiko and Cara Jaye were in this beautiful show.
(Both Julia and I over-rode Seiko’s objection to be in this show.) We did several environmental art shows
– the first being Botannica: contemporary art and the world of plants, and then later, Critical Messages:
Contemporary Northwest West Artists on the Environment. Two favorite traveling shows were:
Inescapable histories: Mel Chin: an exhibition [exhibited at the Western Gallery, January 28 – March 16,
1997) and Embedded metaphor (exhibited at the Western Gallery, September 29-November 22, 1997), a
bed show which had some incredible installations.
I had a goal to connect shows with other colleges/departments on campus. Paul and I did a car show with
engineering technology materials, I figured if the Guggenheim did a motorcycle show, we could do a car

6

Under Acting Dean CFPA Ron Riggins I wrote an operations manual for the gallery and for art procedures on
campus. This manual was approved by Assistant Attorney General Wendy Bohlke and President Morse [ca. 1994? Morse came in 93. When was Riggins's first tenure as acting dean?? you could just put mid nineties] In 2014-15 this
manual, under guidance of Dean Kit Spicer, was officially accepted into the new university policies and procedures.
7
Washington Art Consortium set to have disbanded in 2017, according to www.artnews.com, February 23, 2017.
8
These gallery media books were deaccessioned from Special Collections and returned to the custody of the
Western Gallery.
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design show. We took a traveling show based on collecting and inserted collections from Anthropology
and Biology departments. We collaborated frequently with Canadian Studies. We did a large chair show
featuring our collection and northwest artists who did work with chairs. And as I mentioned, I seemed to
orient myself to dance – first the “Noguchi and Dance” show in [2003?], then Diane Kornberg photos and
set for Montreal Danse which was in residency at WWU, and finally with Gosia Wlodareczak’s drawings
of WWU dance students.
In order to get other departments involved, I invited faculty across campus to give exhibition tours on
Wednesdays and they usually were excellent. I connected with student events such as fall parent’s
weekend where the large receptions were held in the gallery. I gave orientation tours in the summer to
new students and endured the annual spring festival.
Greatest challenge
My greatest challenge was to give focus to “art on campus”, including the sculpture collection, where
both the administration and faculty outside the Art Department would/could see the interdisciplinary
aspects of art.
Sculpture Collection
As mentioned before, I think it is important for people to see the connections WWU has had with regional
events and arts – for example Paul Thiry (Fitzgerald, Seattle Center concrete murals done first at WWU,
etc.) Certainly, Larry Hanson’s involvement with Earthworks Symposium was important and he probably
was the one who told Gene Vike to call me about the gallery job (I have no proof – just guessing). The
symposium began in 1978; the jury on which I sat was in January 1979. It was Craig’s early relationships
with Nancy Holt, Robert Morris, Beverly Pepper, and Dennis Oppenheim at the symposium, which
allowed me avenues to them when I first got to WWU. Dennis married Alice Aycock in late ’79-early
Eighties so I got to know her through Craig too.
More on sculpture the next time we meet.

This is the second part of a two-part interview. This one takes place on July 27, 2016, in the Fine Arts
Building on the Western Washington University campus. The interviewers are Tamara Belts, Barbara
Miller, Hafthor Yngvason and Sharron Antholt,
BM: I was going to say what we did last time so that everybody is on board, and
then we go in the room.
TB: Okay. Perfect, perfect.
BM: Okay. So last time, we met at Sarah’s in Lynden on July the 19th, and we
talked about the gallery, the history of the gallery, which we hadn’t really
planned on but kind of organically evolved as we were out there. I didn’t know
that the gallery started in the Thirties. It wasn’t called the Western Gallery, it
was just called the Studio Gallery. Then Sarah [came as] the first director, hired
in 1988. So that was a pretty historic moment, and it’s great to have all of this on
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tape.
Last time, we talked about what it was like coming with no files set up, with all of the collection kind of
here and there, and trying to organize it. We also talked about the different collections, the Safeco, the
Leese, the Chair Collection, and the Atkins Collection. Then Hafthor at the end asked her what her
highlights were, and Sarah said the Noguchi Exhibition, the exhibition on environmental art, and she also
said working with outdoor sculptures and the site-specific artists, which was great. That meeting was just
Hafthor, Sarah and myself, Barbara.
And so today, Sharron Antholt has kindly consented to coming and adding her memories of the Outdoor
Sculpture Collection. So, if we go around the room that would be great.
SCL: I’m Sarah Clark-Langager, past Director and Curator of the Outdoor Sculpture Collection. It’s my
joy to be here, for you to joggle my brain today.
HY: I’m Hafthor Yngvason, the current Director of Western Gallery and Curator of the Outdoor
Sculpture Collection.
SA: I’m Sharron Antholt. I taught the Outdoor Sculpture Collection for many years when I was teaching
here. I recently retired.
BM: And I’m Barbara Miller. I teach art history, modern and contemporary art, in the Art Department.
I’m still here.
Okay. So, I have some questions but Hafthor, did you want to ask any specific questions?
HY: No, let’s start with yours
BM: Because I have a list. I have about ten questions.
So what was the Outdoor Sculpture Collection like when you arrived in 1988? This is a list of what we
have now. I’m assuming that most of this work was added under your tenure, probably quite a bit of it.
SCL: No.
BM: Actually, probably a good dozen or so though.
SCL: So, the Rain Forest [James FitzGerald] was here, the Norman Warsinske was here, the Tibbetts,
the Noguchi, the Robert Morris, the Bassetti, the Beyer, the Hamrol, the di Suvero, the Caro, Melim,
Westerlund Roosen, John Keppelman, Nancy Holt, Robert Maki, one Beverly Pepper - the Wedge, the
Serra, the Judd. The Trakas was a temporary work when I arrived and later got added as a permanent
work. The Aycock was here.
The Scott Burton was during my regime, the Rückriem also, the Meg Webster also, Abakanowicz under
me, the Otterness under me, the Nauman under me, the Ireland under me. Burning Island, what is that? I
have no idea what that is. And Claude Zervas was under me, and the one that’s over in [Miller Hall] -Paul DeMarinis and Rebecca [Cummins].
BM: Okay. And then, also, Paul -- Claude -20
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SCL: Claude Zervas.
BM: Yes.
SCL: That was also under me.
BM: Okay. So a number, a good half, a good dozen, have been under your supervision and instruction.
SCL: Yes.
BM: So, what were some of the highlights? What are some of the things that you remember most about
working with those artists, working with the committee? Maybe you should just explain the setup of the
committee, because last time we talked about how originally architects had sway over everything, and
then with public funding coming on board, things had to change.
SCL: Right. So it was in the 1970s when the Washington State Arts Commission set up a public art
program that the university sort of, what shall I say? In unison with a sort of awareness of public art,
there were people in the Art Department, especially Larry Hanson, who made it very clear that it should
be people who had expertise in the arts, make up the committee. Rather than a dean or you know, a vice
president, a provost type. And so they got together what would have been known as the first sort of real
Outdoor Sculpture Collection Committee. The committee worked together. Larry Hanson obviously was
representing the Art Department, and then there was Richard Francis, who was in the English
Department, but he was very active in terms of the committee. Richard Francis was superb in terms of
taking notes of the committee. That is how I found out about a lot of the history by going through all
those minutes that happened since, I would say, mid-1970s. Then gradually, when I came on board in
1988, we kept that Arts Committee, and it changed a little bit over time. Primarily I would say though,
the main factor was adding someone from Facilities Management (FM), because anything you do, as you
know, eventually ends up in Facilities Management, getting permission of where to work on campus.
Then we had to work with the Washington State Arts Commission because they had certain rules and
regulations as to what we could do and what we could not do.
BM: So the person who represents Facilities Management, did they begin as an advisory role? Because
now they vote.
SCL: No, they were placed on the committee by President Morse.
BM: So they were always a voting member.
SCL: Yes.
BM: Okay.
SCL: So, depending upon where the funding was coming from, if it was coming from the state, the
Washington State Arts Commission, there were certain rules we had to follow. Then if there was a gift,
for example from Virginia Wright, obviously the committee -- that gift would be brought to the
committee, and the committee would make a recommendation. The recommendation, obviously, would
then go to the president, and then to the Board of Trustees. I would say that probably -- I would say in the
early Nineties, it was when Western got permission from the State Arts Commission to actually nominate
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artists to be put on the jury list, on the selection list. In other words, before that time, the only artists we
could look at when we dealt with state money was the artists who were in the state database.
We, having a very strong emphasis on national and international artists, really made a strong case that we
should, given our history, that we should be able to nominate artists to be put into the database. That’s
when I knew that most artists, for example, [Ulrich Rückriem], let’s just say a lot of them are, so even
Abakanowicz -- if a letter was sent from the state that said, we are having a competition, please submit
work. Obviously, artists of that stature are not going to submit. I would give the names of the artists to
the State Arts Commission, and then I would follow up with telephone calls to either the dealer or to the
artist themselves and just say, we are the ones who have nominated you to be in this database. Please
submit.
BM: Great, thanks. So I mean, there is a lot of sort of rumor, questions about how pieces were dealt
with, when pieces broke down how they were fixed, and it would be really nice to have all of that on
record. So, I was thinking like starting with the Morris Steam piece [Untitled (Steam Work for
Bellingham)]. I mean, I think it’s really important to have what you and I talked about in regards to
James FitzGerald’s work. And even though you’ve written a little bit about the Lloyd Hamrol, the piece
[Log Ramps], it would be nice to have a little more information about that. And more about the Alice
Aycock, the Beverly Pepper, and Keppelman’s piece. And at the end, I really want you to talk about what
you told me about Nauman. Then some other things that you said in an email. So, if that’s too much, we
can select it down a little bit. If there’s something that you guys want to particularly ask about or go a
different direction, does this sound reasonable to ask about?
SA: It does.
HY: Sure.
BM: Okay.
SCL: So who -BM: So Morris, start with Morris.
SCL: Robert Morris. The situation with Robert Morris was that one summer, a mother and her child
were visiting campus and the child got in the Robert Morris and stepped on the hot, heating coils, because
someone out there in the world had actually dug them up out of the earth. We did not know that they
were lying right there on top. So, the young child got burned on the foot. The parents went to the
university and demanded that the sculpture be turned off, which of course upset me greatly because I
knew that the real problem was the vandalism that had brought the pipes up to the surface. So we worked
on the problem of how to solve that for years on end. Finally, Facilities Management, the director, the
previous director of Facilities who was an engineer came up with this plan, they tested it, and it worked.
We sent the plan of how we were going to change the heating systems, so to speak, or the steam system,
and we sent it to Robert Morris, who gave his approval to go ahead with it.
He was kept – well, all of the artists whenever there was a problem were always kept -- I always kept
them, you know, right there with me in terms of letting them give me advice or saying they objected to
whatever I was telling them. So, I cannot, I’m not smart enough to tell you how the steam system works
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now, but I’m sure there’s enough information someplace, in an email or in a file or whatever, that tells
you exactly how it happens. The other thing that we did, we made sure that the pipes were down in the
ground and that there was a grid that went over the pipes so that no one would be able to dig them up
again.
HY: Was the work moved? Or is it right in the same place as it was -SCL: Same place. That I would say that easily went on for about ten years.
BM: Yes, easily. I think I remember when I first got here, which was about 16 years ago, and then for
the longest time until a couple years ago was it turned back on again. And I always wanted to see it, and I
couldn’t. It was just this pit in the ground.
SA: Well I remember it when I first came here in 1996, and in fact the first day that I came up to the Art
Department, driving around that corner and seeing that, steam coming up, and I had just seen the Robert
Morris retrospective that had been at the museum, at the Guggenheim.
SCL: Yes.
SA: -- in New York a few years before that. They had actually re-created the Steam sculpture there, and
it wasn’t very effective because in New York there’s steam coming out everywhere.
SCL: That’s right.
SA: But then I saw it here and it just took my breath away, because in those days, the steam would come
out by chance. It was early spring, so it was just billowing out, this huge cloud and it was such a fabulous
thing. I never got tired of seeing it.
SCL: It depended upon how much steam or how much heat Fairhaven College or that end of campus
actually was using. It’s true, during the summer, it just barely percolated and then in the winter, you
would come on campus and the wind and it would just -SA: And it would just blow different directions.
SCL: Oh, it was gorgeous -- absolutely gorgeous.
SA: It was stunning.
BM: So it somehow is hooked up to Fairhaven? I thought it was hooked up to the whole university.
SA: The steam -SCL: Well, that end of campus.
BM: Okay.
SCL: So whatever that would be, besides the end of campus. But Robert Morris called me and said that
he wanted to re-create the Steam piece at the Guggenheim. And I said, well, it’s okay with me, if it’s
okay with you. So I had to go to Facilities Management and get the secret formula of how much pounds

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of steam or however you measure steam to make it work [PSIA or PSIG], and so he could then gain
permission, that I could send that off to the Guggenheim.
BM: And so he was fine -- did he ever see the piece, whenever it was redone?
SCL: Yes, yes.
BM: And he was all fine with it.
SCL: And the other thing we did was to -- there used to be logs that went around the rectangle. I’m
pretty sure that he requested the concrete that’s there now that goes around it. We sent him pictures when
it first steamed, that glorious day in the spring after umpteen years.
BM: It was at least a decade, yes.
SCL: Yes.
BM: So, let’s go back to the James FitzGerald, because we’ve talked about that as being the first piece in
the collection and being of an older generation of outdoor sculpture that really isn’t necessarily site
specific -SCL: Right.
BM: -- or more kind of a gallery piece that is outside rather than
inside. I think it is a pivotal piece in the collection. So maybe you
could tell us some of the history of that piece.
SCL: Well that was -- Western actually started its own art program.
They basically said that anytime Western builds a new building, we’re
going to give some money towards art. So that was the first, it was
Haggard Hall, and so that was the first piece. Paul Thiry who was the
architect realized that the Board of Trustees had made this declaration, and so he decided that he would
select FitzGerald to do a fountain. But basically he didn’t call it art, he just put it in the plumbing budget.
And the work was, and it actually was, it’s hard to describe where it was first because you would have to
know what Wilson Library looked like originally.
SA: Hope there are pictures.
SCL: But when I came, the FitzGerald piece had actually been moved over to the side of Haggard Hall.
BM: There’s a picture here of the campus in the Sixties.
SCL: Where is the library?
BM: That would become Red Square, and I think the library’s here.
SCL: So, it would not be on the side of the library that looks out over on Old Main. It would be on the
side that where the flow goes from Red Square to High Street, yes.
TB: Yes, that’s the first original place where it was.
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BM: Oh, okay. Oh good.
SCL: And so, I don’t know when, I don’t remember, when it actually got moved over closer to Haggard
Hall. It probably was when there was a new addition to Wilson Library, when Bassetti [did his addition].
TB: 1972 [completed addition].
SCL: Yes, so they did the new addition to the library then it got moved to the corner. Then when they
decided to renovate Haggard Hall and it would no longer be a science building but was
going to be part of the library, they decided to essentially take out that whole section. It
used to be that you walked in Red Square, went up steps, about seven steps, walked
across, and then walked down about seven steps over to High Street. They essentially
sort of flattened it, if you will. They put the skybridge between Wilson and Haggard,
and they obviously told me that we had to move the FitzGerald sculpture again.
So the FitzGerald also stayed in storage easily for ten years because they kept deciding
what they wanted to do in terms of the campus. One of the ideas was that they were
going to renovate High Street and there was going to be a section close to where Mathes Hall is now, and
they were going to sort of have a -- what shall I say? -- sort of a seating area that would go around the
FitzGerald.
They didn’t get the funding to renovate High Street. So again, it just sat in storage until the Student
Recreation Center came online. The students on the committee, Architects Committee, came to me and
said, We understand that there is a general practice here on campus that when a new building is built that
art is purchased. I said, yes, and then I told them about the FitzGerald that was in storage and how
wonderful it would look on their front porch. (Laughter) They loved the idea. So the architects worked
with it, and obviously that’s where it is now.
But also we talked a little about the donor who had been here at Western, who was giving funds to help
conserve the FitzGerald when it was brought out of storage, and he basically said that he would give
money to Western if there was a plaque somewhere that would honor the veterans of World War II. And
I remembered the other day, there is a plaque over in the lobby of the PAC.9
BM: There is a plaque though, there’s a donor plaque, and then there’s a plaque saying honoring the
veterans of World War II on the side of it.
So it’s moved twice? Is that what you’re saying?
SCL: Yes. No, three times. The FitzGerald was moved three times. Originally in front of Wilson, and
then it got moved to sort of the front of Haggard Hall, up closer, but up against Haggard Hall, and then
the third time was when it went to the Student Recreation Center.
9

Editors note: Memorial Organ, dedicated on April 30, 1952 in the then new Auditorium-Music Building (now
PAC). “The organ in this auditorium is dedicated to the memory of the students of the college who gave their lives
for our country, 1941-1945.”]

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BM: So what’s that, what, four decades or three decades in storage?
SCL: No, I would say about ten years.
BM: Only about ten years? Oh, okay. The Lloyd Hamrol also, it’s been moved a couple times too,
right?
SCL: The Hamrol originally was where Parks Hall is, until a bulldozer came and knocked it down.
Obviously, Hamrol was called in to redo the piece. And I think, well initially, I think, the NEA had given
money to help do a workshop when Hamrol built it with the students, and then the monies -- I would have
to look at the credit line and where the money came from to actually have Hamrol rebuild it.10 He re-built
it where essentially it is now.
BM: So it was originally done in 1974 and reconstructed in 1983 and 1995.
SCL: 1995 was when they removed a lot of the rotten logs.
BM: Oh, okay. So, is -SCL: 1983 would be -- that’s about right because that’s when Parks Hall -BM: -- was built. Oh, reconstructed in 1983. So is that part of Western’s stewardship, or is it part of
state funding? I’m just wondering because that piece is going to continually rot because of what it’s made
out of.
SCL: Right. That was an initiative on the part of Western.
BM: So, we have to come up with funding every time we want to -SCL: Right. The Washington State Arts Commission, whatever they have given, whatever we have
partnered with the Washington State Arts Commission for, they will only give monies for conservation
for those pieces which are probably, what, seven?
BM: Was that all?
SCL: That’s all. They will not give us any money if it’s a private gift. They would not give us any
money for the James FitzGerald. They wouldn’t give us any money for Nauman, etc., because it’s not
part of their program.
SA: Even Virginia Wright’s gifts, they didn’t -SCL: Oh no.
(Pause in the recording)

10

Original funding: Combined funds from the National Endowment for the Arts, Bureau for Faculty Research,
Department of Art, and Art Allowance from Environmental Studies Center. Funding for 1983 reconstruction: Parks
Hall construction funds, gifts from Georgia-Pacific Corporation and Builders Concrete. Funding for 1994
reconstruction from WWU Physical Plant.
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BM: So, Alice Aycock. I mean, that’s kind of a nice resolution about what happened to Alice Aycock’s
work.
SCL: Well, first of all, Washington State Arts Commission would help with funding on the Alice
Aycock because it was in partnership with their Art in Public Places program. The Aycock, the architect
of the Chemistry Building sent me -- came to me or sent a representative, I honestly can’t remember at
this time, and said essentially that the Aycock had to moved because of the erection of the Chemistry
Building. And I think you all have heard me say, removal is not a word in my vocabulary. So, as you
know, they came back and they adjusted their architectural plans so that there’s this wonderful curve at
the end of the Chemistry Building that sort of matches or sets up the same contour of the Alice Aycock.
Then when they got ready to add Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education (SMATE) to that
science complex, they again came and said, we need to move that sculpture out further. I said, it just
cannot be moved. That’s when they had the idea of having the stairs that would go down. And Alice -again, I called up Alice and tried to tell her exactly what was going on and what advice could she give me
and what she would really like to happen. She loved the idea of the stairs, that you had that sort of a little
parapet where you could stand and look over the sculpture and then go down the stairs. She really liked
that.
BM: It is nice. I went out there recently -SCL: Because otherwise you had to stand where the Richard Serra was and just sort of – hope you could
[see] it.
BM: Yes, I think it actually makes the piece better.
SCL: Oh, absolutely.
BM: So, that was a really nice resolution for -SCL: A very nice resolution. So good things can happen. (Laughter)
BM: If you get the right architect. Beverly Pepper’s, Wedge was moved though, right?
SCL: Was it moved?
BM: That’s what it says in an article I read.
SCL: The Wedge was moved? You came up -- no, it wasn’t -- I take that back, it may have been moved
but it certainly did not move very far. In other words, when you came up the front steps between Parks
and environmental sciences [Environmental Studies Building], it was about where it is right now. What
they did do was to put it on a pedestal; they built that sort of hill for it to be placed on.
There’s an amusing story when they were moving all of those boulders out of where the Biology Building
is now, they were just, you know, taking the sandstone boulders, putting them on the lawn. I came out
one day, and the landscape architects had decided that they would like to put the boulders around the
Beverly Pepper sculpture. (Laughter) I said, I’m sorry. They said, well, we just can’t move these. And I
said, the Egyptians were able to move the pyramids, so you can move these boulders. (Laughter)
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BM: I also read that the Keppelman was moved.
SCL: The Keppelman was where the Chemistry Building was and so when that got erected, we had to
check with John as to where a good site would be. He really needed a site that seemed to have a backing.
In other words, so the trees now are also of a framework, if you will, or backing, for the sculpture.
BM: And even though I don’t think her work was moved, the Abakanowicz -SCL: It was moved! I’ll tell you a delightful story on that. She came to campus and made the proposal - well, she gave us two proposals. One was that she would do something with the boulders out in the area
where the Tom Otterness was, or she would create one of her hand-like pieces for us. It was a very, very
difficult decision, but it basically came down to how much money there was in the pot. This also was a
Washington State Arts Commission [funded piece]. So while she was here she sited the piece. Obviously
it was made in a foundry in Italy and got shipped here. They brought it to campus, and it hung literally in
the air until she arrived in the Washington State Arts Commission black limousine. She got out and went
over and looked up at the sculpture and looked out over the landscape, and said, No, it cannot be placed
there. The dedication was to be the very next day and we needed a concrete pad. So she said -- and
actually where it was would be if you were walking towards the Fairhaven tunnel, if you look up there’s
sort of a hill that you have to climb up to get where the Abakanowicz is now. The original siting was just
at the top of that hill, but she moved it back closer to the road. So I ran to Facilities Management and
said, oh my gosh, we’ve got to pour a concrete pad. What can we do? And supposedly there’s some
miracle – that you can do that.
BM: Fast-setting concrete.
SCL: Yes. And so we got it done.
BM: Oh wow, in 24 hours? That’s -SCL: In the nick of time.
BM: That’s a heavy piece, I’m surprised. I’ll have to go look at the concrete pad. (Laughter)
BM: And then, you have lots of stories of the Bruce Nauman [Stadium Piece]. About how it was sited -see, I never understood that it was always planned to be moved.
SCL: Yes.
BM: The move was part of the contract.
SCL: Well first of all, I remember Virginia Wright calling me one day, and she was practically in tears,
and she said, I have just found out that there’s no money left in my Virginia Wright Fund and that I’m
going to have to build it up over, you know, a long period of time. She said she really wanted to do
something for Western, but she just couldn’t do it at this time. So I reassured her that everything was just
fine.
Then when she was ready to give Western a gift, she called me up and she said, I would like to give
Western a sculpture. Who are some of your favorite artists? Who would you like to propose? And I
said, of course, I adored Bruce Nauman’s work, but I said, you know, Bruce Nauman came in -- I think he
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was second to Abakanowicz when we had that jury. And I said, everybody was very much in favor of his
work, and I think, you know, that people would agree, that they would love to have a Bruce Nauman. She
also was interested in proposing [Sol LeWitt] and somebody else. I don’t remember the third person. But
she and I agreed that if Bruce was interested, then she would commission him to do it.
So she commissioned him and obviously he came up. He was interested in the Hamrol sculpture. He
liked the idea of sitting, and he could see and obviously the ramp. He was very much interested in -well, everybody was interested in the whole sculpture thing. Anybody who visited really was very much
taken by that. He made the proposal to do Stadium Piece, but the Board of Trustees, the president of the
Board of Trustees made it a condition that he would have to place the sculpture basically where the
parking lot is now, behind Parks Hall, and that when -- what’s the building over here? Communications.
When Communications [Facility] was finished, they didn’t want it to be placed out in front of
Communications because they wanted that to be a playing field. When Communications was finished,
and then when the AIC [Academic Instructional Center] came online, they began to talk about being able
to possibly move the Nauman where he originally wanted it, which is just almost where it is right now.
But given the new AIC building, he obviously wanted to re-site it slightly differently because he wanted it
so that when you came up from Fairhaven and you approached the bridge between the two wings of AIC
that all you saw was the Bruce Nauman sculpture, the steps. That caused a great furor because the
president wanted, when you came up from Fairhaven, wanted you to be able to see the front steps of the
university. The artist won on that one. That’s all I’m going to say. (Laughter)
BM: Did you want to talk a little bit about the plans that he -SCL: When Nauman made his proposal, he was very -- he was interested in the topography, everything
that was going to be around his sculpture. He made this 3D model, and it had, you know, the landscaping
just right, and then he had essentially this block that had been put over the Nancy Holt sculpture. When
the model was presented to the president and to the Board of Trustees, it was the first time that it really
had dawned on them that the AIC building was going to sit on top of the Nancy Holt sculpture. They had
seen it in drawings, but until they actually saw it in Bruce’s model, it literally had not phased them. So
Bruce Nauman, you know, in a sense I think saved the Nancy Holt, to a certain extent, in that they
literally did not place the building on top of Nancy Holt.
BM: Had he done a stadium before that?
SCL: He had done a series of bleachers.
SCL: Bleachers in a gallery, in the Donald Young Gallery in Chicago. Hafthor has in his collection a
photograph of a Nauman bleacher piece. Have you found that photograph?
HY: I’m not sure.
SCL: It’s a gift -- it was a gift of an art critic in New York, and he had a photograph of a bleacher piece
in New York City, and it was a Bruce Nauman. I think there’s some slight drawing on the photograph that
Nauman had done.
BM: So the bleachers are no longer in existence?
SCL: No.
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BM: They were just temporary?
SC: Yes.
BM: The more I think about it, the more I think that, and as you were saying, the Nauman was really,
Nauman when he came, he was very interested in the Hamrol and the Nancy Holt. I’ve been thinking
about the Holt as being a kind of arena. I’m just wondering if he was really trying to have a conversation
with other pieces in the collection. It sounds like he was doing that.
SCL: I don’t think he was.
BM: You don’t think he was?
SCL: No. I just remember him making comments on the Hamrol and the Nancy Holt. Obviously Holt
and Nauman lived in the same area, so, you know, he knew Nancy.
SA: He also had been working on these step pieces, which had irregular steps like our Stadium Piece
does. He has one in the Art21 video, he shop talked about that one that he has where he lives. There’s
also -- there’s one in Artpark that goes up a hill that has irregular steps. I don’t know the timing of this,
but I think it was something he was working on at the time. He had one set of bleachers which hung from
the ceiling -SCL: Yes.
SA: -- when he showed -SCL: Yes, and he also did a step piece for Steven Oliver, and Oliver was – Oliver Company was the
construction company that made the Bruce Nauman for us.
BM: Wow, okay. So another one exists in this general area?
SCL: No, Oliver’s is in – it’s out of San Francisco. Bruce also made a pro- Well, I take that back. I
remember Donald Young, his dealer, saying that, Bruce is interested in several ideas. One was the
Stadium Piece, and the other idea was -- you know, he was doing these like holes in the ground, these
rooms underground, and he was interested -- and it was in a sort of triangular shape. I thought, I’ll never,
ever, ever get the university to accept that. (Laughter) Never. So I said, I think maybe we should go
with the Stadium Piece.
BM: So how difficult was it to orchestrate the move? Was it a lot of paperwork?
SCL: I think in the contract that the university signed with Nauman, it said that eventually it would be
moved, so that there had to be a plan as to how it was going to be moved. And I think, I’m pretty sure
that Oliver put into the contract or the plan was that they literally were going to pick it up. But when it
came to being moved, they essentially moved it as if they were moving a house.
BM: Oh, they put it on -SCL: They put it on, what would you call it? You know, when you do a flat tire, what is that called?
SA: Jack.
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SCL: Jack. So they jacked it up and inched it across to the side, and snow was on the ground -BM: It didn’t crack?
SCL: No.
BM: Wow.
HY: We have great pictures of it.
SC: And they had to rebuild the base. Yes, there are some wonderful photographs.
BM: So do you want to talk about the Noguchi parking pass or no? I think it speaks to education.
SCL: I don’t remember when this was but let’s just say, in the recent past. I went to get my parking pass
in September, when we all came back to the university. I went in, plopped down my money, and they
gave me the parking pass, and on the parking pass was the Noguchi sculpture. I must have just sort of did
like that and didn’t say anything, and went back to my office and fumed all day about it. I finally called
parking and said, I’m very sorry, but you do realize that we do not own the copyright to this image and
you cannot do this. At that time, no one was really talking about copyright. I mean, it just wasn’t on
people’s brains. So I said, you know, I’m going to have to tell the Noguchi Foundation that this is what
you’ve done, and I am sure that they are going to fine you. And of course they were very upset. But I
said, but this is how the world works. So I called up Amy Hau at the Noguchi Foundation and told her
that I was very sorry to report that they had put the Noguchi on the parking pass. You could hear this
gasp, but she was a very, very understanding person, and she said, you know, I used to work at
universities so I know how this can happen. I said, you have every right to fine the Parking Office, and
they did. They sent the Parking Office a fine of, what did I say it was, $500? And the Parking Office had
to reprint the parking passes.
BM: I think it’s good to sort of, speaks to how we still need to educate. Because even though these
sculptures are on campus, we don’t own copyright. I think with, what is it, the GO, Pokemon GO,
students are uploading sites for that, and there have been some YouTube sites that have been uploaded
with -- Someone just sent me, Alan Stein just sent me a video on, what’s the game where they shoot with
suction? I forget what it is called.
SCL: I’m not a video person.
BM: I mean, I think that it kind of all speaks together, that it needs to be a little more stressed [in our]
education about the works on this campus, that they are [under copyright]. It’s pretty important that it be
done.
SCL: Right.
BM: It’s an ongoing process. How do you do that when students are playing dodgeball or these shooter
games inside, first person shooter games or whatever they’re called. They sort of have this sort of thing
where they shoot these suction cups at one another through the windows of Nancy Holt, which is an issue.
SCL: Well they used to -- every summer I used to give tours when new students would come on campus,
tours in the afternoon. I’d take the parents and the students on tours around campus, which basically was
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really sort of showing them the campus, but I obviously wove into those tours not a lecture on the
sculpture but just helping them understand, you know, what the sculptures were all about, and how we
could appreciate them, etc. Then for a while, I gave tours to the people who were in charge of the
residence halls, so that they were aware of the Outdoor Sculpture Collection, and then the students in the
residence halls, they could tell the students in the residence halls, etc.
BM: There’s still a lot of vandalism on campus.
SCL: Yes, but it’s the same thing, I think, when the Seattle Art Museum did their sculpture park. You
know, it was like the first day or the first two days, there was graffiti on the sculpture in Seattle. And the
newspapers, Seattle Times, The P-I, etc. started calling me and saying, we realize that you have a
sculpture collection at Western, and what have you done in the past about graffiti? Suddenly, you know,
after about the second call, I said to myself, I better really think about what I’m going to say. So the next
time I got a call from a reporter, I said, you know people are used to going to a museum. They go to the
museum and go out the back door and there’s this beautiful little sculpture garden, and they realize with
the proximity of the sculpture garden right next to the museum, they are essentially in sort of a gallery
space, and so they know how to act in a museum. When they go to the park, they expect to be able to
throw Frisbees, you know, run around with friends and dogs and everything else. And when the two
come together, sculpture and a park, they don’t know how to react. And so I said, basically, it’s an issue
of respect, of young people coming to realize that it’s not just sculpture but it’s all property that we have
to respect. So that basically was my statement any time somebody called me. (Laughter)
BM: I don’t know, we can talk about missed opportunities, or issues of dealing with vandalism... I don’t
know, what do you want to talk about? I did not know that we almost got a [Felix Gonzales-Torres].
SCL: Oh, yes. That’s a very interesting story. What was his name? Pablo Schugurensky came from
New York, he was the head of the public art program at Washington State Arts Commission. It was at the
time of the monies coming from whatever the credit lines is on Abakanowicz [One-half-of-one-percentfor-art, Art in Public Places Program]. He set up a jury, and he brought in two people from L.A., and one
person from the East Coast, I think, New York. Then there were myself, Virginia Wright, Chris Bruce,
who was at the Henry Gallery at the time, and Patterson Sims, who was at the Seattle Art Museum, on the
jury. The three outside people, the two from L.A. and the one from New York were never given any
information about the Outdoor Sculpture Collection, and Pablo did not put a tour into the program, a walk
around campus. So they really did not understand, you know, what sculptures we had, what the campus
was like, etc. At that time, we were not, I’m pretty sure we were not allowed to make our own
nominations of people to submit to the database. I am almost positive that the people who nominated the
names outside of the database were the jurors, because I distinctly remember going through long lists and
trying to find how many people wanted X-artist and how many people wanted Y-artist. And one of the
artists was Felix Gonzalez-Torres, and when he sent in his material for the database, he actually sent in a
proposal of what exactly he would do here on campus, which was a boxing ring. We were all intrigued
with it. But all I’m going to say is that there was a very -- there was a procedural matter that made us
redo the whole jury system, because, and I cannot remember, again, I’d have to go through the files. It
was either -BM: It had to be the early 1990s, because that’s when Gonzalez was doing those boxing rings.
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SCL: Yes, right. And it was either something having to do with voting, or it had to something to do with
the fact that we objected to the fact that this was the only artist that we were looking at who was making a
proposal. In other words, we were swayed by the proposal rather than -- because always in the past, we
always chose the artist, and the artist came to campus, etc. But it was a procedural matter, and all of us
essentially woke up the next morning and said, uh-uh, something’s wrong. It wasn’t the work that was
wrong, it was a procedural matter that we said, we really need to redo the jury again. And I and Virginia
Wright and the Dean at that time actually went to -- I want to say the World Trade Center -- the trade
center in Seattle [World Trade Center Seattle] and had a conference with the Washington State Arts
Commission people to explain to them what we thought, you know, should happen and what we deemed
had gone wrong. So we redid the jury, and that’s when Abakanowicz was chosen.
BM: Okay.
SCL: And, what’s the name of the critic who writes in Seattle? Jen Graves? Is that the name? The
Stranger.
SA: I just read something, and I can’t think of her name.
BM: Is it Jen Graves?
SCL: I think it’s Jen Graves. [She] found out about this years – how old is the Abakanowic? The early
Nineties, right? So, she called me up, oh let’s just say 2010, and was very interested in this story. And
we had to turn over the files to her so that she could, you know, look at the files. I had to take the files to
the Assistant Attorney General and let her go through all of the files to make sure that Western couldn’t
be sued or whatever, and she deemed that the files were perfectly okay. So there is some comment made
by Jen Graves in The Stranger about the Felix Gonzalez-Torres almost happening at Western.
BM: Okay. That’s kind of, 2004, that’s -- because Felix Gonzalez-Torres died, I think, in the late 1990s,
mid to late 1990s.11 I don’t remember exactly when he died, probably was the mid to late 1990s. That
would have been quite a bit after his AIDS-related illness death.
What about Gary Hill?
SCL: No, we did almost -- I don’t see it that way. The Gary Hill that we have, which is adjacent to
Hafthor’s office, was actually a project of the state for two other buildings in Olympia. They decided that
they did not want it, and so, the Washington State Arts Commission came to me and said, we have this
Gary Hill that’s just sitting in storage. Are you interested in having the Gary Hill? And I said, yes, we
would very much be interested in that. Then they proceeded to tell me that I had to put it in an enclosed
space because of the projectors, if you will that he, the very early ones that he was using that might be
dangerous. So that’s why it’s in the enclosed space.
BM: In Hafthor’s office. (Laughter)
Do you have any memories or recollections, Sharon, about any pieces that bother you as you’ve been
teaching over the years?
11

Felix Gonzalez-Torres died, January 9, 1996.
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SA: I know that Magdalena Abakanowicz has said that the cost of the sculpture, having it made and
brought here was about exactly what the budget was, so that she felt that her piece was a gift. That
happened to other artists as well, didn’t it, that they really didn’t get paid very much for their work, or is
that true?
SCL: Abakanowicz definitely stated that to me just as she was leaving and wanted to know were there
any extra funds that could be given, and I said, no, I mean, that’s the budget. I think we have been
extremely lucky [in having] artists who have been willing to work with us knowing that we had no money
whatsoever, [not having] a decent budget.
BM: Holt, actually, put some [of her own] money -SA: Oh that’s right, you said that.
BM: Richard Serra paid for -- I don’t know, did he get money out of Wright’s Triangle? I know that he
paid for at least one survey, about the ground.
SC: Right.
BM: There were like three different surveys done about that [regarding] the integrity of the ground
where it was originally sited. I know he paid for -SCL: Right. But otherwise the money came from the NEA grant and the match by Virginia Wright.
I’m trying to look here to see if there’s anything else. Another story I can tell you.
BM: Do artists -- have artists donated work to campus? Like, not collections but -SCL: I always said, we don’t accept donations from artists. But we made an exception and I made a case
when -- I just passed his work -- Cris Bruch offered some work to the university. The Cris Bruch works
are down in the Communications [Facility]. I made the argument to the committee at that time that Cris
Bruch had always been one of those artists who had been on our list of who we really were interested in
someday having in the sculpture collection. Everyone agreed that that would be fine. So that’s the only - and then Mia Westerlund Roosen, she essentially gave her piece, Flank, but it had been, you know, it
had been here for how many years before we asked it to be permanent, and that was a gift.
BM: Any questions you have about conservation (referring to Hafthor)? I mean you’ve been working
this summer on conserving a lot of work, and you’ve written about the Di Suvero piece in your essay,
right? You wrote about the changes to the piece that weren’t anticipated?
SCL: Yes.
BM: Yes. I don’t know, is there any questions?
HY: No, not about conservation.
SCL: I’ll tell you a quick little story about the Do Ho Suh. Well, I’ll tell you two stories.

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It took forever to site the David Ireland work. It took easily five years to site it. He wanted it in front of
Old Main, because he had gone to Western12 and he had fond memories of Old Main. The president did
not want it in front of Old Main because, again, it would block the view of Old Main.
BM: How much would it block the view by? (Laughter)
SCL: That the lawn of Old Main should remain pristine, even though we had the Donald Judd down
there at the far right-hand side. Anyway, we sited I cannot tell you how many different places on campus,
and, you know, there was always some sort of objection. Finally, Linda Smeins was the acting dean at
the time. She and I came up with the idea that maybe they would accept the idea of it being put on the
hill, the ridge of a hill close to Fairhaven. He was very, he did not, he was adamant about really wanting
it still on the Old Main lawn, but he understood that this wasn’t going happen. So I would say that
probably was the worst case scenario that I had in terms of just going around in circles and not being able
to do anything that really pleased the university.
HY: What were the objections that people had?
BM: To putting it on Old Main?
SA: Besides the Old Main lawn, there were other places.
HY: Yes.
SCL: One place was basically where the Meg Webster is now. So in other words out in front of
SMATE. And we would go -- there was a wonderful person in Facilities Management who was great
with digital photography, and we would take an image of the David Ireland, and I’d just go around and
place it in various places and hand over the proposal to them. But that would not work because that
whole lawn out in front of SMATE varies in terms of hardness and softness. It can vary like two inches.
It can be very hard underneath and then go to complete soft and so the engineers basically said, that’s too
tricky.
Another place was sort of across from where the Robert Maki is now, in front of Edens Hall. They didn’t
like that because that would mess up Edens Hall.
Let’s see, there was a suggestion of it being in that whole area where Communications and AIC was, but I
knew -- I really wanted the Nauman to sort of star in that area. So you know, we just ran out of
suggestions.
BM: And eventually wound down.
SCL: Yes.
BM: I’m assuming that initially there wasn’t too much to the contracts. I mean from what I saw on
Nancy Holt, it was a description with some siting involved in it. How did the contracts change, with
artists? I understand now the new contracts that happen have a clause in them that the work can be
moved?
12

David Ireland attended the Campus Elementary School (Training School) during the 1930s and early 1940s.
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SCL: I don’t know about that unless the state contracts have that. But contracts that are written with a
particular donor, in other words, when Bagley and Virginia gave those seven works in 2010 or whenever
it was, they didn’t have anything in that contract that said, you know, the work [wouldn’t be moved].
[Nor did] the university put anything into the contracts that said we had the right to move [them]
anywhere we wanted to.
BM: Oh, that’s my misunderstanding.
SCL: That’s okay.
BM: So, an artist can object if it’s sited one spot and then moved to another spot.
SCL: The artist can object, I mean, obviously I would voice the artist’s objections, but whether the
university would do anything about it is a different question.
HY: But some of the works are site specific, other works like Meg Webster’s is not -SCL: The Meg Webster could be put any place. We could find other suitable sites for the Meg Webster,
but what I’m saying is that there’s nothing in the contract that says that Meg Webster cannot be moved.
HY: Exactly, it was bought for Virginia Wright, for her house and it’s been relocated here. The seven
works that Sarah mentioned all came from Virginia Wright’s house.
BM: Right, yes. I mean, I just found it really interesting that thinking about the evolution of sculpture,
thinking about how it gets moved outdoors, and once it gets moved outdoors, you think about things like
climate change, the climate hitting it. You think about environmental factors, but you don’t really think
about university expansion. I mean I’m sure they thought about vandalism to some degree, but there are a
lot more factors that are suddenly impinging on these works that weren’t -SCL: Yes, that’s right.
BM: -- initially there.
SCL: The Scott Burton was moved. When the Scott Burton came to us, that was part of the Meg
Webster and the Joel Shapiro, you know, that whole big gift. The university said, the football team could
easily move these sculptures, and so we really wanted them inside. So we placed them just inside
Haggard Hall. Artech from Seattle helped us install them. Virginia Wright, oh, a couple of years ago, she
and I were having a conversation and she said, you know, I really would like to have the Scott Burton
outside. So we went through siting them. Actually one of the ideas was to place them sort of like on the
porch of Old Main, so you’d go up the steps and there’s sort of a grassy area and place them there.
Finally, you know, that didn’t really work. So we walked around, and we decided to place them in front
of Biology, and she was very, Virginia Wright was very pleased that they were now outside. Artech had
to come and remove them from Haggard Hall, and it was like moving the pyramids because they literally
had glued them, used a type of glue to the floor. Also in one of the sections, they worked all day long on
just one of the chairs. But they unhinged it, beautifully.
HY: [I want to] ask you about the title of the work, it is Two-Part Chairs: Right Angle Version.
Shouldn’t they be at the right angle?
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SCL: Should they be at the right angle, meaning? I don’t understand what you’re saying. Should they
be -BM: Situated.
SCL: Situated...
HY: So one is at the right angle to the other -SCL: Oh, to the other? I don’t know. That’s a good -- that’s a way to interpret it. I always understood
that he wanted them like Virginia Wright -- you’ve seen the picture of how Virginia Wright had them at
her house, and she said it was like the chairs were for two sort of guards, sort of guarding the doorway.
SA: And they were sitting at right angles to the wall.
SCL: Yes, yes. But that’s an interesting interpretation.
HY: Is that a question? (Laughter)
BM: And you can’t ask him, so.
SCL: That’s right. But the Do Ho Suh, that was a very, very tricky installation in the AIC building
because the artist was originally was given the -- now, you all who know architecture, where the original
drawings by the architect, and then there’s another set of drawings that are called, what, made to build
drawings or something like that? They gave Do Ho Suh the original architect’s drawings. So all of his
team went according to those particular drawings. And when they realized that it was, that we had this
made to build situation that Facilities Management was going by -- that they weren’t going to mesh. And
if you go upstairs on the same level, what would that be, the second level? Where you can look straight
out towards the sculpture, if you sort of move to the back where the elevator is, and if you look up, you’ll
see these short figures hanging down, and of course the strands get longer and longer and longer. Where
the short figures are, there is a sort of block section of concrete, and the figures just fit within that area. In
other words, we did not have to start all over again and, you know, do the ceiling all over again. It was
sheer miracle, that because the figures were smaller that they fit. As soon as you look up you’ll notice.
I don’t have any other stories -BM: Did he come to campus for the opening?
SCL: Yes, he did.
BM: And so he must have been pleased with it.
SCL: He was very pleased.
BM: Oh, good.
SA: He seemed to be, because he spoke at it.
SCL: Yes, yes.
BM: Yes, [I remember he talked and everything, yes].
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SCL: But you know, he had just finished doing that piece at UCLA, for the Stuart Collection, which was
the one on top of the building [Jacobs Hall].
SA: Right on to, the house -SCL: The house that collides with the building. And I remember showing that to the president and
saying, be thankful that he’s not providing this (laughter) – on top of Old Main.
BM: [It is a] nice story because his work on campus kind of collides with the ceiling.
SCL: Yes.
BM: It wasn’t meant to, but it does that.
SCL: Yes, yes, it does.
BM: I mean, it’s a very vivid part of it where the ceiling kind of breaks into the piece. It’s kind of nice.
Anybody else have questions? Do you remember anything else you want to say?
SCL: Oh I’m sure when I get in bed tonight, I’ll remember something else, but ….
HY: What was the most fun to work with? I understand what you were feeling, you know, I’m so glad
now every time ….
SCL: I enjoyed working on the Bruce Nauman the most, just because he was such a wonderful person.
And Ed Simpson was the representative from Facilities Management, and Ed was excellent, excellent to
work with, and would just try to help Bruce do what he wanted to do. And so it was a very enjoyable
situation.
HY: Could you tell me about the Otterness? Now that is not minimalist sculpture, were there some -- did
it attract opinions about the Otterness?
SCL: Well, when Otterness was chosen, I -- maybe we had a conversation about this obviously is not
Minimalists work, but I think in the most cases on those jury situations, we really were trying to find the
best artist possible, and you know, obviously, he was chosen. Because I was curator, I could not say to
the jury, Okay -- I could make an argument for a particular artist, but I did not control, I couldn’t control
the jury. In other words, my vote counted just as much as their vote did. So when Otterness came [and]
walked around campus and proposed what we have now, the biggest outcry came from the people in
Biology, because it was going to be -- the sculpture was going out there in the green area, the landscaped
area, and they could not get it into their minds that the sculpture was only going to be 18 inches high.
They kept saying, 18 feet, in that area? So the biggest outcry came from the Biology people.
SA: And actually, after it was installed, remember we had that FAST magazine then -SCL: Yes.
SA: -- newsletter, and for weeks after it was installed there were articles, letters to the editor saying that
they didn’t think it was sophisticated enough for our sculpture collection -38
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SC: Right.
SA: Not from people in the Art Department, from other people that really didn’t like it.
SCL: Yes, that it was too whimsical, that art couldn’t be funny.
SA: Yes, art shouldn’t be funny, all those things.
SCL: That’s right.
SA: Which made me like it more. (Laughter)
SCL: And so, I used to say, Well, go look at the Richard Beyer, go look at The Man who Used to Hunt
Cougars for Bounty, that’s sort of whimsical, you know. (Laughter)
BM: Well, I don’t know if it’s whimsical.
SA: Students have another name for it.
SCL: Yes, I know.
HY: When he was there, was the [Beverly Pepper, Normanno Wedge] already in place?
SCL: Yes.
HY: You know, I know the one where one of the figures is holding a stone above his head, [is that a
direct reference]?
SCL: Yes, yes. Yes, I think so.
HY: Another question, do you know El Lissitzky’s work from 1920 called [Beat the Whites with the Red
Wedge]?
BM: “Lead the Whites with a Red wedge” is what we used to call it. It was a comic book, it was not a
comic book, but it was started for children, but it’s this very abstract circles and wedges that are about
Russian politics at the time. Just to jog your memory if you don’t remember.
HY: Yes, I was just wondering, would it be appropriate to expect Beverly Pepper to have made reference
to that work?13
SCL: I would think so. I mean, you know, personally I would just ask her, but she’s -- I think she is very
much aware of other people’s work, so, yes.
HY: It kind of gives it a [provocative edge].
SCL: Right.

13

If one is to look at the work of Malevich and/or El Lissitzky and then the work of Beverly Pepper there does seem
to be a resemblance to both of these constructivist’s works.
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BM: It would be interesting to find out if she was thinking -- because like, Zaha Hadid, I mean, her
whole work just came from Malevich and so a lot of the Russian Constructivist, Productivist work was
highly influential to a lot of American artists. That would be fun to ask her. I mean, that’s a pretty clear
connection. But it would be interesting, it would be great to just email her and see what she has to say.
SCL: Well, her early sculpture, I mean, the sculpture that’s at Dartmouth is very, you know, very much
like that, very sharp angles, going into the ground, and -SA: She made a number of wedge sculptures.
SCL: Yes, yes.
SA: Quite a few.
HY: Everybody was doing sculpture with wedges at that time.
BM: Any other points, questions? It’s your time to get this on tape Hafthor. (Laughter).
HY: I have a direct connection to Sarah, so whenever a question comes up on conservation and things
like that, I just call her up.
SCL: I’ll say, just give me a day and I’ll remember.
BM: I think it’s, I mean, just for my own little bit of research, it’s nice to have some of this stuff
recorded. I mean, I like the idea of the oral history a lot. So it’s good to have this on so that it can be -SCL: But what really needs to be done is to redo the sculpture book, because so much has changed.
SA: But that will continue to be. I mean, it will continue to change. Like, every time they do a new one
of these, then they have to again revise it.
SCL: Yes. Or at least do a book on, you know -- I mean, how many sculptures that are in here are not in
the book?
SA: That’s right.
SCL: Easily ten.
BM: For me, it was most frustrating doing research on this, in not being able to find an online document
that readily -- I mean, I really had to search to find things online. And a lot of collections now have -- I
don’t know if they really focus too much on paper products, but a lot of them have -SCL: You were saying maps and -BM: Yes, maps or, yes.
HY: Well, we are launching up a new website in Drupal, in a couple of weeks. They’ve been saying that
for a while (Laughter). But Drupal is much easier to work with that way. The website we have now is
very static, and to make any changes/additions is a huge amount of work. Also it’s very difficult to
search it, so you put in Noguchi and don’t get our website.
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BM: That is frustrating, yes, really frustrating, to be working and researching.
HY: So I’m hoping to be able to put a lot more information on the website, including a bibliography.
But one thing that I really want to bring back, which I think is an amazing feat, you know, one of those
great projects that you did, that I wish I had done, and was on my resume, was the interview of the artists’
on the outdoor sculpture tour. That of course is outdated now, and the technology is outdated etc. But
I’ve gone through the text, and it doesn’t need much revision. Some of the other works can be treated in
the same way -SCL: Right, right.
HY: -- we could get an interview with the artists, etc. And my plan, my hope, is to basically use your
text, add to it, use the same quotes from the artists, get the appropriate students from the Theatre
Department to read it all and then have it available on the website.
SCL: Yes. That’d be great.
SA: It is in your book, much of those interviews are in your book.
SCL: Yes.
HY: The whole statements, whole interviews are there.
SCL: What was I going to say? But we used to in the day when people did audio phone tours, people
would come to the gallery and pick up a little walkie-talkie.
Pause in transcript
HY: But then, you know, when Robert Morris was created [Steam work for Bellingham], people were
not so into thinking so much about the environment, but later that became a huge issue, because people
wanted to turn it off completely because they did not want to display this waste of energy.
SCL: That’s right. And they would always give me, you know, it costs so many millions of dollars per
year to run the Robert Morris. And I would counter with it takes so much money to do, I’d pick
something.
BM: How much money does it cost to run the Morris?
SCL: I don’t know.
BM: I can’t imagine that much.
SA: And much of it was excess steam, that’s why you get more in the winter.
SCL: That’s right, yes.
HY: But they refused to keep it on for the whole day.
SA: Well, it wasn’t that you wanted it on for the whole day, because the point of the sculpture, which
you spoke about in the beginning, was that it had to involve chance. You wanted it to involve chance. In
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the beginning, that is what happened. It would come up more when there was more steam and dwindle
down in the summer.
SCL: Right.
SA: Where now there’s no chance involved at all.
SCL: That’s right.
HY: That’s right, yes. So, since it’s been turned off and on?
SA: Yes. You know exactly what time it’s going to come on and you know what time it’s going to go
off, and you know how much steam is going to come out too. It’s no longer conceptual, dematerialized
work that has to do with chance, what he originally wanted.
SCL: But when we got with him and explained the situation, he did a lot of research. Going to,
supposedly fairs, state fairs, [where] there are rooms that you can go in that have fog or steam or
something. There’s this company that does this, this atmospheric thing to entertain the kids at the state
fair, so he helped by looking at all those, saying would it work or wouldn’t work, etc.
SA: Well, to a certain extent I can see that, because one of the ideas he’d been working with at that time
was this interest in the actual making of the work, how it functioned, and this idea of plumbing was really
– that’s why he talked a lot about how this plumber was a genius.
SCL: That’s right.
SA: And the idea of plumbing would still be there in this work, the fact that you could just make it work
in a different way.
HY: Marcel Duchamp said that the only great works that America had produced were plumbing and
bridges. [The only works of art America has given are her plumbing and her bridges].
(Inaudible, multiple speakers)
SA: -- Bridges and plumbing.
HY: Bridges and plumbing. (Laughter) That he was trying to make a great American masterpiece.
SA: And Duchamp was one of his great influences.
BM: That would make a lot of sense that he would, so it’s a funny piece. I never thought of it as being a
humorous piece, but it is.
SA: It is.
SCL: And you know, I once did a show in the gallery on the Outdoor Sculpture Collection, and I
borrowed from the Seattle Art Museum the Box with the Sound of Its Own Making
-SA: Oh, perfect.
SCL: -- which was perfect to go with the steam piece.
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HY: That’s in Seattle?
SCL: Yes it is.
SA: It is; it is because of the [ready made with the hidden noise]. Well, he did another piece called Three
Rulers.
SCL: Yes.
SA: Which is like the standard stoppages [Three Standard Stoppages].
HY: Now Lucy Lippard, in her book Six Years of dematerialization14, that is just display, there is no text
about it. It’s actually the steam work he did in Philadelphia. It’s just pictures of it. I saw just clear
examples of dematerialization imitation. Do you know if he was thinking about that or did he ever? Was
he trying to create work that was just pure display of dematerialization?
SCL: I don’t know. I’d have to go back through -SA: My take on it was that, this was a perfect example of answering the question from Duchamp, Is it
possible to make a work that’s not a work of art? Because sometimes it’s not even there, and still it’s a
work of art.
SCL: Right, yes.
SA: And you can’t -- or like Christo [Christo Vladimirov] came to the campus once, and he walked
around, and they were saying, Well, what if you built one here, what would you do? And he said, I’d like
to wrap the Steam sculpture (Laughter). Of course, you know, there’s nothing, really.
HY: That’s what we did when we did the Imagine Peace Tower in Iceland with Yoko Ono. You know,
we explained to her that there were all kinds of environmental conditions and you would not see it for
weeks. And she said, that’s exactly what I want. That piece was based very much on one of her
instruction pieces from 1965, create a house with replacing prisms. If the sun is not shining the house is
not there.
TB: Well, I have a quick question if nobody else does. Because you did talk a little bit about Richard
Francis and some other faculty who obviously kind of really engaged. Did that happen very much? I’m
thinking of a nice article in FAST in 1997, when they’re talking about, I think, moving the Holt (Rock
Rings). Vladimir Milicic, I think, in Modern & Classical, he wrote quite a little piece about the
interaction of the three pieces on the south side [Rock Rings, Steam Work for Bellingham, and Manus].
So did that happen a lot where faculty got involved in it, other than being critical, to be supportive?
SCL: I think there were various faculty on campus who were very much interested in the sculpture
collection and would -- for example, the mathematician who would always give – [Branko Curgus] -who would always give his students some formula or something in regard to the Noguchi sculpture.

14

Lucy R. Lippard, editor, Six years: the dematerialization of the art object from 1966 to 1972: a cross-reference
book of information on some esthethic boundaries … New York: Praeger, [1973];
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TB: I still have that on my desk.
SCL: It’s in the Noguchi symposium book.15 Every spring I’d have to get out the folder and say, I don’t
remember the formula. Just hold on a minute (laughter) I’ll get it.
And there were people, you know, like people in Liberal Studies -- I used to go to Liberal Studies a lot
and give lectures to the students on the sculpture collection. And I think somebody who used to be in
environmental scientist, somebody by the name of John Miles.16 He was very interested in the Nancy Holt
sculpture. So yes, you could go around to the different departments and colleges and pick out people who
were very much interested in -SA: And as time goes by -- these are going to be more and more appreciated because their values are just
going up and up and up, and I think as time goes by, they’re going to be much more appreciated.
SCL: Yes. And I’m always amazed at how many people would walk by the gallery and say to me, I was
in Chicago, San Francisco, whatever, and I saw a di Suvero, or I saw an X, and they would be just so
pleased that they were able to identify them, the artist.
TB: I’m one of those. Because I ran into one in Paris -- there was the Abakanowicz -- the Manus piece
was in Paris. I was just shocked. I didn’t realize that people did multiple copies of almost the same thing.
And there’s a di Suvero, I think, down at Stanford? Oh, it’s the one that’s For Handel. Who did For
Handel, di Suvero?
SCL: Yes.
TB: Theirs is a smaller version of it, yes.
HY: That’s a smaller version!
TB: Yes, right. We’ve got the big ones, you know. It is exciting when you’ve been on the campus for a
long time, and then you go someplace else and you go visiting and you recognize the work, and you’re -BM: I know people who make trips specifically to Western for the Outdoor Sculpture Collection.
SCL: Oh, absolutely.
BM: Take their students.
SA: Oh yes. Whenever an artist has come to visit me, they want to see that first and me second.
(Laughter)
BM: Thank you.
End of recording

15

Curgus, Branko, “Numbers in the Sky(viewing sculpture),” Isamu Noguchi and Skyviewing Sculpture, edited by
Sarah Clark-Langager and Michiko Yusa, Western Washington University Publishing Services, 2004.
16
John C. Miles, Professor, Geography and Environmental Social Sciences.
44
Sarah Clark-Langager Edited Transcript – July 2016 – Two Sessions
Campus History Memories Project
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