Colby Magazine – 150 Years of Women at Colby

Only it wasn’t enduring. Polaroid failed to diversify its product line and stopped innovating. Its once-great product, an industry leader and cultural icon, became an anachronism as digital photography made instantaneous, high-quality images mainstream, cheap, and ubiquitous.

I arrived in Waterville in January 1985 at 22 years old, a recent college graduate with my first newspaper job at the Morning Sentinel. My beat was the Board of Education, but I was hired as a general assignment reporter and was part of a five-person city desk reporting team responsible for covering all the news in Waterville and nearby towns.

Soon after I arrived, the city editor sent me up to Colby to write a story about the opening of an exhibition at the Colby College Museum of Art. The artist was Alex Katz, and the exhibition included about 100 artworks from the collection of Paul J. Schupf. The assignment involved interviews with the artist, the collector, museum director Hugh Gourley, and Colby President Bill Cotter.

In one assignment, I was introduced to Colby, the museum, and the always-evolving wonder and reward of Maine art. I had no idea at the time, but that assignment changed my life by setting its course.

Down the block, work continues on the Paul J. Schupf Art Center, an $18-million contemporary building that will open in late 2022 adjacent to the Waterville Opera House. Named after a longtime Colby donor and Trustee Emeritus, the Paul J. Schupf Art Center will bring together several of Waterville’s beloved arts institutions and include screening rooms for movies, a commercial art gallery, studios, and classrooms, as well as a contemporary gallery for the Colby College Museum of Art.

Colby has invested upward of $100 million in revitalization and redevelopment projects in downtown Waterville in recent years, cementing the College’s long-term commitment to its partnership with the community.

Waterville may be more than 300 miles from Wall Street and more than 3,000 miles from Silicon Valley, but it remains the beating heart behind the thriving business careers of Colby alumnae Leslie Dougherty Biddle ’89, Felise Kissell ’91, Andra Ofosu ’07, Joerose Tharakan ’08, and Anne Clarke Wolff ’87. For these five female executives, rising to the top of their careers took grit and determination—and a confidence driven in part by their Colby education.

In competitive industries like financial services and tech, women, and especially women of color, continue to remain underrepresented.

African-American artist Faith Ringgold, 91, is finally receiving the recognition she has long deserved. This winter, the New Museum of Contemporary Art in New York opened a career retrospective, an event of such significance the New York Times named it among a dozen of the most anticipated art happenings of 2022.

The Colby College Museum of Art will have its own Faith Ringgold moment this year. The museum has acquired one of Ringgold’s renowned “story quilts,” a painted textile that merges domestic art-form sensibilities with African-American folk traditions. Colby’s story quilt is Coming to Jones Road #4: Under A Blood Red Sky, which Ringgold painted in 2000. It is one of 10 in Ringgold’s culturally important Coming to Jones Road series.

Early in his songwriting career, Maine native Kenneth Jacobson ’50 rhymed “farm” with “calm.” This worked for Mainers, but not for his New York City music publisher.

At least that’s the story Jacobson told a Maine Sunday Telegram reporter in 1983, embellishing his already fascinating career with his own style of Maine folklore.

Jacobson, a prolific songwriter and AIDS activist, died March 22, 2021, in New York City. He was 91. The writer of more than a hundred songs recorded by popular artists of the day such as Peggy Lee, Frank Sinatra, Ella Fitzgerald, Jackie Wilson, and Nat King Cole, he also composed songs for two Broadway musicals.