Susanna Temkin Miami Shores, Florida Double Major: Art History and Spanish Minor: English
Susanna Temkin has experienced firsthand Duke's new blossoming in the arts, and she loves it.
"This is an exceptionally exciting time," Temkin says. "There's an arts boom going on at Duke. We have great professors and now we have the Nasher."
From its opening in October 2005, the Nasher Museum of Art has captured the attention of students and faculty. The "Nasher Noir" parties, for example, attract 1,500 students a night, and many more events pull in students as well. The still-climbing weekly visitor counts testify to the museum's growing popularity to audiences on and off campus.
"It has also become a great new place (for students) to congregate," Temkin says, along with the new Bostock Library and nearby Von der Heyden pavilion coffee shop.
The opening of the Nasher is the biggest, most obvious sign that there's a new focus on the arts at Duke. Designed by architect Rafael Viñoly, the $24 million museum concentrates on modern and contemporary art and has become a major cultural asset to the Research Triangle area.
But there are other signs of this new emphasis: Duke recently embarked on a $2.5 million, multi-year Visual Studies Initiative to improve teaching and understanding of visual culture, and the university's new Strategic Plan has ambitious goals for improving arts facilities, research and production.
Temkin has been influenced by the arts at Duke, but she has helped influence the arts on campus as well. She has spent many hours at the Nasher as a student, art enthusiast and volunteer. As a member of its Student Advisory Board, she helps set the museum's program.
She also has conducted her own research there under the direction of Senior Curator Sarah Schroth. And she also is president of the Duke Union Visual Arts Committee, which organizes exhibitions and events for the student center.
Recently, she helped research Nasher's upcoming blockbuster exhibit, "El Greco to Velasquez." She did her own comparative research project on the stylistic traditions of El Greco.
Temkin decided early on to major in art history and the visual arts. She says she was "captured" by the grotesque imagery of Goya's celebrated series of very large "Black Paintings" when she first saw them at the Prado in Spain. She has added a double major in Spanish, partly to explore that interest further and partly to better understand and share her Cuban-born mother's heritage.
The Duke in Spain study abroad program allowed her to return to Madrid, an experience she shared with 11 other Duke students. She describes her semester abroad as "the highlight of my life, not just the Duke years. We all became like a family."
Being a Mellon Mays Undergraduate Fellow was the starting point for all she has done academically, Temkin says. "That gave me the opportunity."
She is unsure of her plans post-Duke, but is looking at options involving a return to Spain and further study. And she wants to study the artwork commissioned to mark the Madrid train bombings by terrorists.
Temkin says that Duke has shaped her in other ways, including how to strike a balance between work and play, "how to carry myself, how to reach goals."
Another attractive feature, she says, is that "people go out of their way to help others; there is no cutthroat competition here." Instead, she claims, "There is a nice amiability to campus. Maybe it's the Southernness, the environment. Whatever, I like it."