Portrait responses
12 October 2014
Our new-look hall, with 21 portraits of Hertford women, was unveiled three weeks ago, and now it has been mentioned on Have I Got News For You it seems a good time to review the responses.
We’ve been overwhelmed by the coverage: from The Guardian and The Daily Telegraph to the New York Times Blog and the BBC website. In addition, there’s been a fair amount of comment on Twitter and on Facebook, as well as some old-fashioned letters. If you haven’t had your say yet, do write to us or use one of these means to take part in the discussion.
Most of the coverage has been very positive, and the large majority of our feedback from old members and others has been proud that their college would do this. For most people, it seems that Robert Taylor’s black and white photographs sit remarkably well in the hall’s wooden panelling. Robert’s own blog on the project is characteristically reflective and interesting, especially on the question of photographing women and ‘the very delicate balance between surface/cosmetic appeal and other factors such as character, charisma and presence’. Almost regardless of their content, the new pictures look clean and modern and the space really benefits from being curated as a whole.
Students at this year’s Freshers’ Dinner – our intake is exactly 50/50 this year – seemed interested by the project and excited by the sense that Hertford was breaking new ground. Some student comments are reported in the coverage by the student paper Cherwell. Lots of colleagues from across the university have contacted us to ask how we went about this project, so perhaps there’ll be more elsewhere. It prompted one alumna to launch the latest edition of the literary magazine Five Dials in the hall. And the response to our Women’s Gaudy invitation has been extremely positive.
Of course – and we welcome the debate – there’ve been some alternative views expressed. The below-the-line comments on the online newspaper articles are often deeply and angrily opposed to this initiative as political correctness gone mad. The suggestion has often been made that co-education could be better celebrated by adding some women to the existing portraits in hall, rather than replacing them all. Some interesting commentary has used the new display as a provocation to think about our attitudes and obligations to our institutional past. One Oxford colleague asked ‘would there be a college or a hall there in the first place if it hadn’t been for all those dead white men? Seems a dangerously reductive way to think about a complex institution’s history to me’, and others expressed similar worries. Clearly this is a real point for discussion, not just in Hertford but across a university where history is writ large. How should we acknowledge the past without being held back by it?
Some people objected to the inclusion or exclusion of certain sitters – and it’s certainly true that we could have done any number of exhibitions with entirely different women featured. Our aim was never to create a pantheon, but to give some sense of the range of things Hertford women have done, in and out of the public eye. John Donne and William Tyndale were often identified as figures of such eminence that the college ought never to displace them (current students were more worried about the fate of the stag’s head, also removed for the duration). And the Guardian’s headline shorthand about ‘dead white men’ roused many, including Sir Walter Bodmer, our honorary fellow and former principal. Like his immediate predecessor, Sir Christopher Zeeman, he is very much alive, and I apologise that the coverage rather overlooked that important fact. A current Oxford graduate student, writing in the Oxonian Review was the most articulate of commentators writing from an explicitly feminist viewpoint unimpressed by a display she criticised as tokenistic and patronising.
Do come and look at the portraits if you haven’t yet had the opportunity to do so. They will be there for this academic year, and we always enjoy welcoming old members back to the college: contact the Development Office to arrange your visit. The exhibition is also open to the public on Sundays from 2-4 pm this term (12 October – 30 November). We are in the process of considering, with current and former students, what should go up on the walls of hall at the end of the year.
STOP PRESS addition: the Oxford Student reports that Brasenose JCR has voted for a similar project in their college.
Get in touch with Emma Smith to share your views.