VES Anticipates Good Report; Sekler to Resign Directorship

Eduard F. Sekler, director of Carpenter Center for the Visual Arts, said yesterday that the outcome of the visiting committee report on the Visual and Environmental Studies department (VES) will probably reflect favorably on the department.

Sekler also announced he will resign in June as director of Carpenter Center.

During one of the meetings with the committee, Sekler, Hooker Professor of Visual Art, said he wanted to devote more time to research, and that Robert G. Gardner, present chairman of VES, will take over his post in addition to the chairmanship of the department.

Students who met with the committee members came away impressed.

"They were surprisingly receptive and interested in us because we represented a different point of view than they had heard earlier from the faculty," Alex Griswold '76 said yesterday.

Griswold said the students were particularly concerned with the printmaking department of VES, and that June Wayne, a member of the visiting committee, agreed that "that particular department of VES has gone downhill a lot since I was last here three years ago," Griswold said.

In a meeting with students yesterday, Wayne encouraged them to get together and write up specific proposals for changes at the center and then send them to the visiting committee.

Push for Printmaking

"The point I'm making is this--you should pick up what swing you can from us, write out your proposals, and make them semi-public. You need a good printmaking department," she said.

However, Wayne said she doesn't think her opinion will carry much impact with the committee "because I am a woman and they think I'm nuts anyway."

Albert Alcalay, lecturer on Visual and Environmental Studies, disagreed with Wayne on the importance of improving printmaking, because he said it first needed good draftsmen.

"I don't believe there's a big rush to improve printmaking," Alcalay stated.

Doing Well

He said his impression of the meetings with the visiting committee on Thursday and Friday was that it "went very well, and they found that we're doing well at Carpenter Center and in VES, and that we have a new spirit since their last visit."

Katherine Miles, a research fellow in VES, yesterday said "some people on the visiting committee felt there was a significant, positive change in Carpenter Center, but that depended on what area they were looking at. If they saw printmaking they had reservations."

Miles also said that changing the department to a non-restricted major was hardly discussed since only a small number of students now apply to VES and most are accepted.