Walter Anderson Symposium

Millsaps College will host the Walter Anderson Symposium September 23-25, 2004, in Jackson, Mississippi, as the final event in a yearlong celebration of Anderson’s work on the occasion of the hundredth anniversary of his birth. Center Director Charles Reagan Wilson has been a primary planner for the event, which is a project of the Walter Anderson Centennial Committee that has coordinated exhibitions, festivals, and seminars during the year.

One highlight of the Anderson symposium will be the keynote address by Christopher Maurer, author of Fortune’s Favorite Child: The Uneasy Life of Walter Anderson. Maurer teaches at the University of Illinois, Chicago and is also the author of Dreaming in Clay on the Coast of Mississippi: Love and Art at Shearwater.

The symposium will include readings by two authors whose fiction has been illustrated with Anderson’s work. Ellen Douglas used Anderson’s illustrations in The Magic Carpet and Other Tales, and his paintings appeared as part of Elizabeth Spencer’s book On the Gulf. They will share their thoughts on the relationship of art and literature, looking specifically at how Anderson illuminated their work.

One session at the symposium will put Anderson’s diverse paintings, drawings, sculpture, and other artistic work in the perspective of the modernist movement in art, with panelists Rick Gruber, director of the Roger Ogden Museum of Southern Art; Susan Larson, from the Archives of American Art at the Smithsonian Institution; and Patricia Pinson, from the Walter Anderson Museum. Pinson edited the recent The Art of Walter Anderson, published by the University Press of Mississippi.

Other sessions will focus on Anderson’s relationship to Southern culture and on his relationship to the environment. Among the participants in these sessions will be Patti Carr Black, author of Art in Mississippi; Linda Crocker Simmons, curator emeritus at the Corcoran Gallery; Susan Donaldson, from the College of William and Mary and author of a forthcoming book on Southern literature and Southern art; and Vernon Chadwick, editor of In Search of Elvis.

Bill Dunlap will chair a session on Anderson and the art world. During Anderson’s lifetime, the art establishment offered little acclaim to him, but the yearlong celebration of his work, which included a major exhibition at the Smithsonian, has pointed national attention at the breadth of his achievement.

Anderson’s daughter, Mary Anderson Picard, will share memories of her father and mother, giving a family perspective on his genius. Marilyn Lyons, executive director of the Walter Anderson Museum in Ocean Springs, Mississippi, will tell about the museum, in preparation for a visit there when the symposium ends.

For information about registration for the Walter Anderson Symposium, please call the Millsaps Office of Adult Learning at 601-874-1134.

Matthew Holden Jr. Visits Campus
Matthew Holden Jr., one of America’s leading political scientists, visited the Center on February 24th, drawing about one hundred Ole Miss students and faculty for a presentation on his current research on the origins of legal disenfranchisement in the post-Reconstruction South. Holden visited the Center for an event cosponsored with the Political Science Department, College of Liberal Arts, and the Provost’s Office.

A native Mississippian and African American, Holden presented early research from an upcoming book on Mississippi’s constitutional development. His talk focused on the pivotal role of Isaiah Montgomery, a prominent African American in 1890 state constitutional convention.

Holden epitomizes the modern day Renaissance man. He has had successful careers in public service, private industry, and academia. He is an expert on energy and regulatory policy and has been appointed to numerous government positions, including the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission. In private industry, he was the director of Atlantic Energy Inc. and chairman of their audit committee. Holden is also professor emeritus in the Department of Government and Foreign Affairs at the University of Virginia and a former president of the American Political Science Association.

Holden’s research generally has been on the exercise of bureaucratic power and how it may be effective while also being accountable. Recognizing the critical role of the bureaucracy in our modern society, Holden has argued that the role of the bureaucracy should not be diminished, but instead made more efficient, effective, and accountable. By advocating publicly for the removal of unnecessary constraints on those who wield bureaucratic power, Matthew Holden Jr. has taken the position that it is possible to use governmental power in both a fair and efficient manner.

Richard Forgette