 Well, good morning. I'm Bill Perthes, but Bernard C. Watson, Director of Adult Education here at the Barnes Foundation. And the first thing I will remind everybody is to silence your phone. Mute or silence, please. It's my pleasure to welcome you all to the 2019 Violet de Maisie lecture. This annual event gives us an opportunity to focus attention on important aspects of the history and mission of the Barnes Foundation. The first de Maisie lecture, Soutine, Sources, and Legacy, was delivered by Richard Wattenmaker. We greatly miss Richard, who was a living history book of the Barnes Foundation. But we are pleased to remember him in the reception that follows this afternoon. Last year, we looked at the early life of Dr. Barnes. And this year, we celebrate the life and legacy of Violet de Maisie herself. By a show of hands, how many of you were students of Ms. de Maisie's? How many of you were students in the 1980s? Raise your hand. How many of you were students of hers in the 1970s? How many of you were students of hers in the 1960s? How many of you were students of hers in the 1950s? Thank you, Bob. Ms. de Maisie touched so many of us, whether as a teacher or friend, or through the remarkable body of literature she left to those of us to guide us, fortunate enough to carry on the remarkable work that she and Dr. Barnes started. Later, during the reception, you'll have an opportunity to share your memories of Ms. de Maisie, either by a short video, recording, or on memory cards you'll find upstairs. I will admit that it was with some hesitation that I proposed this topic, recognizing that Ms. de Maisie was a very private person. But I also realized that so many of us would welcome the opportunity to celebrate the impact she had on us. And it's in that spirit that we begin. In September 1925, Nell Mullen, a long-time employee of Dr. Barnes from the Ardual Factory days, contacted the Bryant Teachers Agency in search of a French tutor for, quote, three ladies. A 29-year-old, Violette de Maisie, was recommended for the job. Little could she have known how accepting this position would change the course of her life. Nor could she have imagined the impact she would have in shaping the future of this still-new institution. So keep in mind, this is September of 1925, and the Barnes official opening was on March 19th of 1925, only six months earlier. The events that led to Ms. de Maisie's first contact with the Barnes Foundation are as compelling as what followed over the next remarkable 63 years. Before I continue, in this brief presentation, as my title suggests, my intention is to give a sketch of some of the important moments of Ms. de Maisie's life. It's not to tell her life story, because that would certainly take much longer. And I want to thank Serena Squersky, who dedicated years to conducting the research from which this sketch is drawn. Serena has kindly donated copies of her book, Remembering Vio, which will be available during the reception upstairs, and for a suggested $10 donation, which will go to our Adult Education Scholarship Fund. But please feel free to donate more. Stella Bertha Vialet Maisie was born on August 30, 1896 at 49 Rue Chaptel in Louvoir, Paris, a small town just outside of Paris between Nuit and Gliché. Her father, Israel, Jules Sonny Maisie, was a 31-year-old accountant, native of Bilsk, Podlotsky, now in Northeast Poland, but then part of the Russian Empire. Her mother, Faisy Frankel Maisie, known as Fanny, and her family had immigrated to France, from Russia, in the mid-19th century. And she had a brother, George, three years older. By 1899, the family had moved to Saint-Gilles in Belgium, a commune south of Brussels. The family appeared to have moved in stages with Vialet joining them in January of 1899. There was already an existing family connection with Belgium as Sonny, her father, and his parents had lived there when they first immigrated from Russia. At the time, the Belgian economy was strong. Saint-Gilles, rather, boasted four newspapers and modern public services, including municipal water, gas, lighting, and an electric trolley line. They lived at Rue de Constantinople, 57 in Saint-Gilles. In 1902, at age six, Vialet was enrolled in La Colle Communale, the local primary school. And she was among the few students to complete the full six years course of studies. She then entered the upper or high school of the Isabel Gadi de Gamond Royal Atheneum, which was founded in 1864 as the first non-confessional school for girls in Belgium. Prior to this, most schools were run by religious orders. The course of study included five languages, French, Flemish, English, German, and Italian, history of concepts in literature, comparative literature of modern languages, bookkeeping, elements of natural science, practical handicraft, vocal music, gymnastics, and dance. Vialet completed her studies, earning a special award. Mr. Masio was fortunate enough to have both the opportunity and the ability to complete both her primary and secondary education, which, in the beginning of the 20th century, was uncommon, particularly for a woman. Despite completing her studies, she was not able to receive her certificate in person, because in August of that year, 1914, the family fled from Belgium to England. Conflicts, rather, that would escalate into the First World War were underway. In late July, Austria had declared war on Serbia after the assassination of Franz Ferdinand in June 28 of that year. August 1st, Germany declared war on Russia. August 3rd, Germany declared war on France. And on August 4th, German troops crossed the border into Belgium, a move ignoring Belgium's established state neutrality, an outcome of the 1839 Treaty with London, Treaty of London, rather. As part of that treaty, England had pledged to defend Belgium if ever attacked. The British Foreign Minister, Sir Edward Gray, gave Germany an ultimatum demanding their withdraw from Belgium when Germany refused Britain declared war on Germany. 1914, Violette was 18 years old. It's thought that her brother Georges may have spent World War II in neutral Norway to avoid conscription. Amazia is settled in London, first on Boundary Road, then Fellows Road. It's somewhere around this time that the family incorporated the D in their name, as in Domazia. Violette picked up her studies at the Priory House School in South Hamstead, where she mastered English and became an instructor in French geometry and algebra, preparing girls for the senior Oxford local, the examination for completion of secondary school. 1918, Violette continued her studies, passing both the verbal and written examination in Italian at the London Polytechnic. And that year, on the 11th of November, 1918, marked the end of the First World War. Two years later, in 1920, Violette met Joseph Katz in London. By his own admission in Letters to Violette, Joe fell in love with Violette at first sight. Katz was the son, rather, of a wealthy Sephardic Jewish family from Cairo. Violette and Joe, however, were of very dispositions. While Violette was quiet and studious, Joe was an adventurer. For instance, although only 16 and, therefore, too young to enlist, Joe had joined the Zion Mule Corps by stowing away on the SS Manitou, only revealing himself when the ship was safely halfway to its destination of Gallipoli. Zion Mule Corps was the unofficial name used by five battalions of Jewish volunteers, the 38th through 42nd battalions of the Royal Fusiliers, raised by the British Army to fight against the Ottoman Empire during the First World War. The British Army formed 650 Jewish volunteers into this corps, of which 562 served in the Gallipoli campaign, including Joe. During his service, Joe was twice wounded. Following the Gallipoli campaign, Joe was transferred to the labor corps, working on the Lud Haifa Railway. And he also worked as secretary for Zev Jabotinsky, one of the leading founders of the Jewish state, after which he began fighter pilot training with the Royal Air Force, with the number four flying school at Abu Sayyir in Cairo. Air flight was a dangerous pursuit in the 1920s. This was less than 20 years after the Wright Brothers first sustained flight in Kitty Hawk in December of 1903. During his training, Joe had several crashes, though he was never seriously injured. Over the next three years, from their first meeting in 1920 to 1923, Joe's letters reveal not only his deep affection for her, but also his, and likely her, growing frustration with her father's wavering agreement to their marriage. To ease her family's concern, Joe hoped to convince the Air Marshal to allow him to continue his flight training in England, but to no avail. And I'm going to take a moment just to read an excerpt of one of the letters that Joe sent to Violette. Not such comfort can be found in an Air Force officer's home. I could not attempt to think what cause should harbor such a gorgeous jewel as you. I have enough love to last an eternity. You lost material benefits by coming to me. This is a sad reality. My entire love for you is enough to last eternity, whatever happens under whatever sky in whatever age. But fortune, I believe, strongly never, never can be our share. I never aspire to be rich, but never as today have I so wanted to become so for you. What is called the greatest love would not resist the adversities of nature, that a little girl who has never lacked material comforts cannot be completely happy with a husband with very little money. It is indispensable for two reasonable beings, therefore, before they seal their lives together forever, to thoroughly study contingencies of their married life in every possible aspect. For myself, I have done so most thoroughly. And the verdict is that I love you. I want you. I'll be happy, the happiest of all men, only with you as my moral and legal wife. Do the same. Scrutinize every corner of your heart and of your brain and tell me in all its sweetness, all as well as its bitterest bitterness, all that finds room in you. Bear also well in mind that it may mean you having to abandon all your relatives and relations for good if they persist in condemning our wedding until it has been accomplished. For them to grant us forgiveness after our wedding when they have done everything they could to wreck it, it would be extremely serious. And I, for one, shall never accept it, at least as far as it concerns me personally. Joe had hoped to marry Violette when his training ended in December 1923. Letters suggest that his plan was for them to marry and move to Egypt to be near his family in Cairo. On December 4, 1923, Joe wrote to Violette to tell her about a plane crash that he had survived. However, this was his last letter to her. He died soon after from a brain injury sustained in that crash. On May 17, 1924, five months after Joe's death, Violette departed from Southampton, England on board the SS Aquitania, bound for her first visit to the United States. On this first visit, she stayed six months with her cousins, the Bayouks, in a comfortable house on North Broad Street before returning to England. But as we know, she would return, and this time, to stay. Which brings us back to September 11, 1925. Miss Domesia took the tutoring position and began taking foundation classes with Thomas Monroe, a student of John Dewey's. She immersed herself in the new experience. Within a year, she herself was teaching at the foundation. In the time I have left, I'd like to consider not only Miss Domesia's accomplishments, but her place within a larger historical context. Dr. Barnes quickly recognized Miss Domesia's potential. Not only did she become the instructor of the first year course, but she became part of the writing team, working with Dr. Barnes. Together, they would travel, make annual trips to Europe each summer for research. In the eight years between 1931 and 1939, Miss Domesia co-authored four books with Dr. Barnes. 1931's The French Primitives and Their Forms, 1933's The Art of Matisse, 35, The Art of Renoir, 39, The Art of Cezanne. And for those of you who have read these books there, anything but easy reading. So it's quite an accomplishment to write four of these books in such a short period of time. Her essays for the Barnes Foundation Journal of the Art Department and Later Vistas, publications for which she also edited, remain a primary source for classes here at the Barnes Foundation. In 1950, Miss Domesia was named the Foundation's Director of Education. And following Dr. Barnes's death in 1951, a Foundation trustee. Her accomplishments were also recognized beyond the Foundation walls. Awards and honors she received included honorary doctorates from Lincoln University in 1969, St. Joseph's University in 1970, an honorary doctorate from LaSalle University in 1984, from Moore College of Art in 1986. In addition to this, she was awarded the Chevalier Award of Arts and Letters from the Ministry of Cultural Affairs of France. And in 1976, the Super Achievers Award from the Juvenile Diabetes Foundation. And those of you who are at least as old as I am might recognize who also received that medal at the time, that's Chuck Barris, the host of the Gange Show. Miss Domesia oversaw the educational faculty and staff and she continued to write and teach up until her death in 1988. That might be familiar to many of you. It may not surprise you to know that Miss Domesia's position leading an art education institution like the Barnes Foundation was unusual. That is, for a woman to be at the helm of such an organization. Indeed, the percentage of women leaders in leadership positions, rather, in art education in the United States up until 1976 averaged below 40%. This was true even of those seeking higher levels of education. The percentage of women pursuing doctoral degrees in art education in the United States between 1908 and 1968 was 25%. In Philadelphia, no woman had ever held a city art directorship from the position's inception in 1892 beyond 1977. And this was at a time when the city of Philadelphia was the fourth largest in the country. In the museum world, things admittedly were a little different. For instance, the Museum of Modern Art was essentially founded by three women in 1929. That is, Abby Aldrich Rockefeller, Lily P. Bliss, and Mary Quinn Sullivan. The Whitney was founded in 1930 by Gertrude Vanderbilt Whitney and Hilla von Rebe inspired the creation of the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum. Needless to say, one important difference was that these women were from wealth and society, which is something Mr. Masia was not. And as recently as 2005, women ran only 32% of the museums in the United States. Now women run approximately 47, albeit many of those with much smaller budgets. As I hope I have at least begun to suggest, Mr. Masia came to the Barnes Foundation with an early life rich in learning and touched by tragedy. But she found a new direction for her life here at the Barnes and she remained committed to the foundation throughout her life. And I have to say that I'm greatly honored to continue in her footsteps. But ultimately we are Mr. Masia's legacy. Those of us who studied with her or carry on teaching and learning at the Barnes Foundation. Thank you. And now I would like to introduce Marilyn Bowman, who will tell something about herself before she comes up. I want to say that Marilyn was the director of education at the Villa de Masia Foundation. It was my honor to work under her and she has always been an inspiration for me as well as a mentor. I would not be where I am today, were it not for her guidance, often firm hand guidance. Can you see me? I'm not as tall as Bill. Okay, first of all, I guess I would like to start by how I even got to the Barnes Foundation and met Villa de Masia. That would be the beginning of my talk today. Yes, I can do that, I think. Okay, is that better? All right. So you gotta go way back. Every time I say this I cringe, but I was only in my 20s then. And my husband and I had just moved to Wilmington, Delaware from of all places, California, which one should not do, I don't recommend it. We had lived in California two years for him to finish his work on his doctoral thesis and I loved the place. We lived in Davis, I worked for a newspaper, we toured the whole state. It was just a wonderful experience. And then we came to Wilmington and the National Guard was still patrolling the streets of downtown Wilmington. That was after the assassination of Martin Luther King Jr. They stayed for a full year. My parents thought anywhere south of New York City, which is where I grew up was nowhere. They didn't understand why I had moved to a place called Wilmington, Delaware to begin with much less a place where the National Guard was patrolling the streets. All right, that's the background. I was bored, my husband went to work, I didn't know what I was gonna do, I had to start all over again in this strange new place I was now living. So I decided, well I had always had a hobby of painting as a child and I had gone to a neighbor nearby who taught me how to draw and paint. Why don't I just go down to the Delaware Art Museum and see if they had any classes? And I was lucky because they had been enrolling and the only one that had a space in it that was left was the class taught by Edward Loper, senior. And I was told, oh he's an absolutely wonderful gentle kind teacher, you will love him and he's really, really good with people who don't know much about painting. So they recommended him very highly. Okay, so up to that point, I had been doing pictures like that clown in a woman's house that lived adjacent to ours in the Bronx who took children in after school to teach them how to paint. And I was pretty happy working like that. So that was, you might say before I saw color and you'll understand what I'm saying about that in a second because I'll tell you what Edward Loper, senior was trying to teach me, albeit in a very odd and very demanding way. So since my lessons at that point was learning essentially how to work with color by copying pictures or photos, oh I did whole kinds of things, not just clowns, ballet dances, landscapes, that sort of thing, but they were always copied from something else. But senior, had senior had other ideas. He wanted me actually to see color. And he also was very demanding. And he wanted, he watched what every student was doing in that class and there was probably about 15 of us in that class, like a hawk. And commonly would scream out, you're skipping, which meant you were not putting color next to color, which is what he was teaching us to do. Very loud, very angry most of the time. Anyway, we did the best we could doing this color next to color thing. And I actually was impressed by some of the more advanced students who had been with him for a while, who were doing these exquisitely gorgeous colorful pictures. I wanted to do what they were doing, but I hadn't a clue what he was talking about, about seeing color, because I just didn't see it. All right, so a student next to me whispered, literally, that he was trying to save me from a lot of abuse, whispered that if I was looking at a yellow lemon, I should paint it with any color but yellow. And then he would stop yelling. He would stop assit, harassing me. But I thought that was cheating. If there was color to be seen, I wanted to see it. So I made some slight progress. There's my guy, he posed for us this man, and I was, as you can see, seeing little bits of facets of color by then. And finally Ed told me I should look at paintings by one Greek. I had never heard of one Greek at that point, which I spelled that way. That indicates how little I knew of one Greek. I didn't own any art books, and I didn't, you know, the internet didn't exist. You're going back 50 years. Okay, so I went to the library, and I looked through the card catalog, no one Greek, as I was spelling it. So I asked a librarian if she could research this artist from the one Greek, and I told her how to spell his name. And she told me there was absolutely no artist by that name in her records. So I went back to Ed's class the following week, and I said he must be, well this one Greek guy must be very obscure, because I couldn't find anything about him, nor could the librarian. And Ed, looking very puzzled, asked me how I was spelling his name, and I told him. And he smiled, which I gotta give him credit for, and he said, okay, I'm gonna tell you to do one thing, and this is what you have to do. Sign up to be a student at the Bonds Foundation and study with Ms. Demacia, because she will sharpen you up. Those are his exact words. Okay, so I never heard of the Bonds Foundation either at that point, but I did. I went and applied, and if some of you go back as far as I go back, you may know that we interviewed at her house, which was just very close to the Bonds Foundation. And I found out later that each year hundreds of applicants applied for the 90 or so seats she could fit into the main gallery to accommodate that class. So at the interview, she asked me only one question. What do you get out of going to museums or galleries? And I answered quite honestly, very little. So she laughed, which I figured I was dead in the water. She was never gonna take me as a student, and I truly figured I would not be accepted. However, a few weeks later, I received the acceptance letter. And the first day of classes, she welcomed me at the door, saying good to see you again, Mrs. Barrowman. I was incredibly impressed. She even remembered my name. I was there such a short period of time. Anyway, this is one degree the smoker. That's what I got, finally, from knowing what one degree did to where I ended up making my first so-called portrait of this man that sat for us in Ed Loper's senior's class. But then when I got to the Barnes Foundation, and as you could see from Bill's slides, DeMaysio actually moved the paintings at that point from the walls to easels that she put in front of the classroom. So that was the one she had up there that day when we started. This was the first day of the class. And she pointed to it and said, okay, tell me what you see. And the hands went up. And one student said, a nude woman. No, she said, that's not what's there. And then another hand went up and someone said a nude woman drawing her leg. And she said, nope, that's not what's there. That's not what you see. And on it went. She said, no, to every possible answer. That had anything to do with a woman standing there doing anything. And I kept sitting there thinking, what on earth is going on? Well, anyway, finally she smiled and said, what you see is a painting. And that's an orchestration of light line color and space on a flat surface. That's all that's there. Color on a flat surface. And I remember feeling a wave of relief because somebody finally was going to explain, it looked like to me anyway, what the art was in pictures. It wasn't just gonna be a whole long class about the story and who that woman is and where she lived and how they knew her and all of that stuff. So that's how it all began for me. And I was delighted that I at last found a teacher who could illuminate for me the art in painting because no course I had ever had before through college did that. It was all history. This happened then, this happened then, this happened then. This is what these artists did. But it never explained to me what the art was. Why them and not somebody else? What were they doing that was so special? And I was really curious about that. All right, so I wasn't gonna have a history lesson. Something else was gonna happen that year. So she spent that year introducing many of those concepts that she also recorded in those journals that Bill was talking about and the vistas that she published at the Barnes-Ventation. And I literally came home after every class amazed at how much I now understood and appreciated about the art and painting that I had not even knew existed before I went into her class. So after I spent my second year learning about the traditions with Barton Church, then I enrolled in her seminar. The seminar consisted where the students gave the talks. We were supposed to have learned something by then. And on any subject they chose. So it could be on flower decoration if you want. It could be on dance. It could be on anything you liked as long as they applied the objective method to it as they showed us the art in whatever that discipline was. So I screwed up my courage and I first gave a talk titled Inform Perception, A Personal View with somewhat similar to what you're getting today. And then she published that I was surprised to find out or wanted to and then told me about it in the 1981, 83 vistas. And I gave a second talk, Born Again, which is also a description, a lot of which I'm describing to you today. And she published that one as well in the following journal that came out. And both experiences doing that convinced me that maybe now I could actually start teaching my own students because I had a group of painting students coming to my studio at that point, how they could appreciate the art in painting. So I started teaching these kids how to do it. And I discovered, I'm not sure if it was the hot chocolate at the break on me, but they really enjoyed those talks I did and they would usually ask for them. You're gonna tell us again about the Bonds Foundation lady. I said, yeah, I'm gonna tell you again and I would share it with them which helped me actually learn it as well. Okay, so I started spreading the word and then since then, and especially for the past two years, this is what I've been doing because after starting classes all over the place that would teach students this objective method, I started a program at this Eastside Charter School mainly because it is very close to where the Lopers grew up, very close to Heald Street where they lived. In fact, some of these kids live on Heald Street which is a section of Wilmington and the sad part was none of them ever heard of them. They never heard of these two artists that grew up literally blocks or within the same blocks that they currently lived. So I figured there was something I could do about that. So I started this program at their school at the Eastside Charter School. It's an art club that met after school once a week. And I introduced to them the work of Ed Loper Sr. and Ed Loper Jr. And still trying, we're working very hard on trying to have them learn to see and paint by putting one color next to the other which is what Ed Loper Sr. had taught and then Ed Loper Jr. his son continues to do. So these are some of the kids at the Eastside Charter School. You could see them learning to mix colors at the one at the top and at the one at the bottom left is Ed Loper Jr. who has been coming with me to the Eastside Charter School this year and working with the kids as well. And those are some of the students that were there the day he was there. We don't always get a full attendance. They come and they go. And there is him sitting with a young man named Isaiah Crawford. Very intense young man who does beautiful work and Ed is trying to explain to him a little bit about perspective and how to work with perspective. So this is what we've been doing and we're gonna end it in another couple of weeks because the Ed Loper Sr. and Ed Loper Jr. by the way, if you haven't heard of this exhibit is now at the Delaware Art Museum and it'll be there till August 4th. And if you haven't seen it, this is a pitch. I recommend you go to Wilmington, Delaware and go there and see it. It's quite exciting and wonderful and lots and lots of people have already attended it as well. All right, so that said, we also took these kids who had never ever been to a museum before in their life to the Delaware Art Museum and there's a whole group of them. In the center is their art teacher and on the right you see Ed Loper Jr. standing and there's another teacher right to his left that just was so curious about what we were doing. She sat in on all the classes that we worked with the kids when we were there on these Wednesday afternoons. And along with that, these are our four of our students holding up. This is a banner that was designed by my colleague, David Nolan, who's here in the audience today. Incorporating a lot of the work that they did. Pictures as you see in the bottom row, that's me that I posed for. And the one right to its right is Isaiah's version of me which he did not leave out one wrinkle in my face as you see, very observant young man. He decided that was important to include. So you get a sense of what these children were able to achieve in just a very short time and they're an absolute delight to work with and have been and I'm gonna miss them when this course is complete which is only another couple of weeks. So to conclude, I'm getting there. What I would say Violetta Maisie's legacy is the shortest answer I can provide is something I just experienced only a month ago with the opening of that senior junior exhibit at the Delaware Art Museum. I walked through the upstairs hallway and a tall young man walked by me or he would have walked by me but he stopped. He probably was in his late 30s or early 40s, I can't tell his age. But he said, oh, I gotta stop you, I gotta stop you because you came to my class a while ago when I was only in the sixth grade. I had no memory whatsoever of doing that but he told me the school, Cabe Callaway School of the Arts and I know I have been there. We did a course there as well. He was in the sixth grade and he said, that class changed my life. I was, he was so happy to see me again to thank me for teaching him how to appreciate the art and painting which continues to enrich his life. That's the best gift you can ever get. It doesn't get me better than that. So I'll leave you today by saying for this man and for the countless other students whose lives Violet Demacia's teaching enriched and continues to enrich by those of us who still teach it and bring it out into the world, I'm delighted to be able to say today, thank you, Mr. Masia. Now I'd like to welcome up Amanda McKnight who's presenting on work that Bertha Adams is doing on Violet Demacia's archives. Hello everyone, I'm Amanda McKnight. I'm the head archivist and librarian here. I'm presenting on behalf of Bertha Adams who is on vacation in Italy. So you know, so I'll be reading from her notes to me. Over the past seven months or so on a part-time basis, Bertha Adams, our associate archivist at the Barnes Foundation has been reviewing, rearranging and describing the papers, photos and other materials that make up the Violet Demacia collection. What you see here is a sampling of those materials. In archives lingo, the term for such work is processing, its purpose is two-fold. First, the archivist arranges the material, both physically and intellectually, so that researchers can easily access the documentation and better understand the subjects documented. Then to describe the material, its arrangement and subjects documented, the archivist creates a finding aid, a tool for the researcher to consult in order to determine which materials in the collection would best serve their research needs. In layman's terms, a fancy inventory. When completed, the finding aid is made available online on the Barnes Foundation Library and Archives webpage. For full disclosure, you should know that the finding aid for the Violet Demacia collection is still being drafted. However, you can see now is the, how the materials are going to be organized. As this outline shows, materials are arranged by document type, such as correspondence and photographs, as well as subject matter, such as the Barnes Foundation and its subcategories. Most of the materials date between 1923 and 1987, starting with Demacia's last year living in Europe through her life in America, which of course includes her extensive tenure at the Barnes. 38 linear feet, by the way, is more archives lingo. It tells us generally how much shelf space the collection needs for storage. Now that we have a general understanding of the overall arrangement of the Violet Demacia collection, let's focus on some details. Specifically, we will look at two portions of the collection that are particularly well documented and that highlight two very different time periods of Demacia's life. First, our group of letters in family correspondence written by Joe Katz, the young man you see here. Based on these letters, we can confidently identify Katz as the love of Violet's life. The letters were written approximately three years after the couple first met in London in 1920 and document Katz's time in Egypt as a pilot of the Royal British Royal Air Force when he was stationed at the Abu Suir Air Base. From these letters, we learn many details of Katz's life. We learn of his commitment to the founding of a Jewish state in Palestine. We learn of his eagerness to fly solo despite bouts of air sickness. We learn that he desperately wanted to marry Demacia and was often frantic at the thought that her parents would not support their union. And we learn that Joe Katz had a gift for beautifully and continuously conveying his love and passion for Demacia on paper. From July 20th to December 15th, 1923, a period of 135 days, Katz wrote 116 letters and occasionally a postcard in telegrams to Demacia. He wrote in English and French and occasionally in Italian and often switched languages in mid-sentence. An example of this manner of writing is his first letter written aboard the SS Mantua while en route to Egypt from England. Unlike most of Katz's letters, he typed this one. He begins the letter telling Demacia, I feel so downhearted. My heart seems to have stopped beating. My head aches, my chest feels squeezed to death and all I can do is to let my heart throb as it has continually been doing since God last allowed me to notice your divine little arm waving at me from the pier. He closes the letter with, I love you, I love you, I love you. I embrace your eyes and fall asleep with my lips against yours. For the translation here and of several other letters we are grateful to Dr. Skorsky who provided these while conducting her research. Now you may have noticed Katz's greeting addressing Demacia as little mommy, just one of his several terms of endearment. I point this out because we know it is a pet name that Demacia herself used. This is the only letter we have from Demacia to Katz. She wrote it just before he sailed, perhaps July 12th, which was a Thursday of that year. It reads in part, my heart is heavy with tears, selfish tears, yet it is joyful for your sake and hers. If only you are happy, I cannot be miserable. She sides it, you're mommy. Demacia includes a postscript at the bottom which continues on the back of the paper. It reads in part, I am going up the river to Margate with mother on Saturday morning for two days. Think of me on Sunday morning. I shall be in the same water you are in and if you talk to me, might be I shall hear an answer. We can only wonder what other romantic sentiments Demacia may have composed. In this letter of November 1st, Katz showers Demacia in gift and metaphor. Caracissima, he writes, I am so happy that the ivory necklace found so much grace in your eyes. It keeps you warm because every little ball is packed with warmth of my heart itself and polished with an infinity of kisses. As long as you keep it on your adorable neck, I shall feel I myself was hanging on it. Little have I dreamt that such a small white, that such small white marbles could have such a great effect on my darlingest darling and through the recoil on me too. The complete letter is five pages with writing on front and back of each sheet. As he begins the letter with an Italian salutation, he closes it with Amore Bacci, loving kisses. Katz signs it Beppo, the nickname for Giuseppe, which of course is Joseph in Italian. This is the last letter from Katz dated December 15th, 1923. At the very bottom above the body of his letter is a list of exam questions in reference to his upcoming flight exams. In the letter itself, he writes the last paragraph in English, which reads in part, I shall go to Cairo today for the final arrangements about my departure. See that you are completely ready in every way to get married by the 1st of January. He closes with, of Washariz, attend lots and lots and lots, Beppo. Katz's departure refers to his plans to travel on December 28th from Alexandria to London, where he and Demacia would marry. This however would not happen. From the meticulous research conducted by Dr. Squirsky, we know that two days after this letter was written, the plain Katz piloted spun to the ground resulting in a fatal crash. Joseph Katz died just 18 days shy of his 26th birthday, 15 days before he was supposed to wed Demacia. Demacia's future dramatically changed course. Neither Europe nor Israel would be her home. Instead, she would remake her life in America, staying with relatives in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. This image of Demacia perfectly illustrates this transition. The photo, which was likely taken for a 1922 passport, was also affixed to her document entitled Declaration of Alien About to Depart for the United States. It is dated April 9th, 1924, the year Demacia, almost 28 years old, took a residence with her cousins at 2319 North Broad Street. Just one year later, Demacia came to the attention of Dr. Albert C. Barnes when she was hired to teach French to his employees, likely at the A.C. Barnes Company, the doctor's pharmaceutical concern. At the same time, Demacia enrolled in the Art Appreciation and Philosophy course at the Barnes Foundation, the doctor's newly established educational institution. Two years later, in early 1927, Barnes offered Demacia a position at the Foundation co-teaching the first-year Art and Aesthetics class. This would begin Demacia's 60-year tenure at the Barnes Foundation, where, with Dr. Barnes' philosophy of education as a basis, she would create her own approach to teaching Art Appreciation. The Violet Demacia Collection offers extensive documentation of her teaching methods created between the 1920s and early 1970s. The material comes in a variety of formats, including lecture notes, outlines, material guides, handmade tools, and audio recordings. Today, we will sample the latter. Based on extant documentation, we know that Demacia dictated her lectures and lecture outlines during the 1950s on dictabeltes, a recording medium commercially introduced in 1947. A dictapult is a vinyl loop measuring nearly four inches wide and 12 inches around. It is somewhat similar to a photograph record in that a stylus impresses grooves on the belt to capture sound, approximately 15 minutes worth per belt. The collection contains approximately 100 packs of dictabeltes. Before this collection came to the Barnes, the Violet Demacia Foundation created audio tape copies of the dictabeltes. For our purposes today, we have digitized a brief segment of one of those lecture tapes. So, with no further ado, may we present in her own words and in her own voice Violet Demacia. And now this suitine. And again, we shall look for the new object created out of color, light, light, and so on. And with the attitude we should have now, if we saw and understood that what Titian did to that shoulder, Pintoretto to that drapery, Van Gogh to that face, the body in the background, that what he did to, what these artists did to them, which is called wrong from the point of anatomy of a figure and the weave of a tapestry is right for what we may call the anatomy, the weave of the picture, for the identity of which the so-called right anatomy or weave would not do. And so understanding that should make and looking with that attitude and knowledge should make us a bit more kind towards suitine and make us perhaps more receptive to what he does than when we saw his work for the first time. We look then for what makes up the page. We look and we recognize a boy and we may call it a baker boy. And we also see at the same time, departures from what we know a boy, a figure and so on, are in life. And soon we may also recognize the departures themselves because in principle, they are this, a swirl of a detached motif that becomes soon we feel an ear motif, a distorted ear that is made to run throughout the picture. And we've seen that in a much earlier man. The, again, the Venetian senator by Tintoretto. Now what suitine creates, but never was, but now is and is of intrinsic interest, is a dramatic organization of color swirls. Yes, Tintoretto asks and also by the idea of relating background and foreground on the common denominator of the pattern of the ear and also within the diamond formation. And likewise, as we have seen in Tintoretto, a sense of power too, but a power of a swirl here of rich fiery color rather than, as was the case in the Tintoretto, volumes predominantly light and dark. Here an all over swirl of intermingling contrasting bright colors in marked directions and with forcefulness in the entire canvas. Now some of you may say, oh, you don't like this and look at that makes you feel sick as I've had students tell me so. And if it does, well, it's just too bad for you and you have to be pitted just as it is too bad for people who dislike onions because they are disturbed by onions and others dislike ships because or an airplane because they cannot go on a ship or on a plane without some intolerable discomfort but they're intelligent persons while they don't like those things. They do not for that condemn onions, ships, planes, as things to be simply destroyed, do they? Now many who say they cannot stand, Soutine, those colors they say, awful. Well, you've seen the same people buy and wear scarves, neckties, materials, drapes of all sort and such as these colors very similar in effect to those in the Soutine which they cannot stand, so they say. And you've seen them in ecstasy, in front of a sunset or a conflagration. Well, when they say it is really what they don't like such colors in a face, in a body of a boy and the answer to that should be now that you know it, not Jesus answer. It is not a baker boy. It is not a boy. It is not a body or a face. It is a picture. Unfortunately, not all of the dictapult recordings are of Damasia's lectures and there's no documentation as to the rationale or order of the audio tape recordings making it difficult to determine the lecture date and topic. However, this does not keep us from appreciating Damasia's passion, confidence and use of thought provoking analogies to get her students to look and to see works of art. Also keep in mind that certain Barnes Foundation records namely early education records and the central file correspondence are essentially compliments to these teaching materials. While memories, folklore and anecdotes may become a legend it is most, it is the paper trail, the letters, photographs and other recorded information when creates and compiles that suggest and substantiate that person's thoughts and actions. These are the traces of a person's life and legacy. Thank you all for this presentation. I want to thank both Marilyn and Amanda for presenting that information for us. We have some time, if anybody has any questions we'll try to answer them if we can. I'm certainly not going to guarantee that we have the answer to everyone's question but if there's someone that has a question. Was she at all involved in the formation of the collection? So the question was, was she at all involved in the formation of the collection? I'm sure to some degree but certainly every decision any ultimate decision was done by Dr. Barnes. So this, that cube you can pass and you can actually throw it. You're encouraged to throw it. Can we listen to the tapes? Are they available for public listening? Only that section was digitized. It's something that we plan to do in the future but for this presentation we just did a small chunk. They're cassette tapes right now. Anyone else have a question? Lyle. Did you have her cell, did she have her cell like us? She did, there's one painting and one drawing by Mr. Maisie that's in the collection. Yes, so the question was did Mr. Maisie paint? And yes, there's a painting called a necklace of boats that's in on the north wall of gallery 11 and there's a drawing of a head on again the north wall of 17. Ms. Camp. Have you talked about Mr. Maisie's collection when she passed the things that were, that she held and if there's any interest, any information on which pieces she favored? So as I understand, the formation of the Villa de Maisie foundation was from the sale of her collection, everything went to Christie's and the proceeds of that form the endowment for the de Maisie foundation, pieces that were left over from that exhibition, that sale rather were retained by the de Maisie foundation and have been, as far as I know, absorbed into the archives of the Barnes Foundation. Anyone else? No? Okay, I'd like to thank all of you. So the reception will take place upstairs in the light court so you'll go up the steps, when you get to the top of the steps, turn to first your left and then to your right. We're all the way at the west end. As I mentioned, there'll be Serena Squirsky's book, Remembering Villa, will be there for which we're asking a $10 donation for the Adult Education Fund and there will be a technician how up there and Amanda has agreed and others will be there to film. If anybody's interested in leaving a sort of video memory of either Richard Wattenmaker or of Ms. de Maisie and they'll also be, when I get up there, I'll put them out on the table, cards where you can, if you were a student, for instance, of Ms. de Maisie and want to write something that you can write that and leave it for us. Thank you all very much.