In Alumni Hall, a collection of Lesley's sometimes strange past
July 28, 2009
A new exhibition of Lesley oddities goes on display next week, featuring strange items such as a lock of hair, unidentified dolls and a few Lesley Elves.
The original Lesley Elf in Stebbins Hall, 1940
That’s right: Elves. Lesley’s mascot hasn’t always been the Lynx. Stashed in the Lesley Archives are a few porcelain lawn gnomes sporting the Lesley colors.
At first glance, they are the most entertaining artifacts in A Cabinet of Curiosities: Treasures and Mysteries from Our School’s Past, which goes up Aug. 3 in the Foyer of Alumni Hall on the Quad Campus.
“Edith Lesley Wolfard was trying to instill traditions in the school and she would go off to Europe and purchase items from the school to make it feel homey and more collegiate,” explained Lesley Archivist Alyssa Pacy. “And she brought back this elf from Germany. It had a little lantern and he was supposed to punish bad deeds and reward good deeds and watch over the students.”
“The original (ceramic) elf was knocked over in a burst of enthusiasm by some of the students,” Pacy said.
The Cabinet of Curiosities exhibit features a smaller elf donated by the class of 1983. Pacy believes it is “one of the last vestiges of the tradition.” The Lesley Lynx was adopted in 1990 by popular vote of the student body.
The exhibit is one of many Pacy is planning to install around campus during Lesley’s centennial year. Four major archival exhibits will be shown in Marran Gallery, beginning with an assessment of the kindergarten profession that goes up in September.
Elf donated by Class of 1983
Cabinet of Curiosities was conceived and researched by Tessa Updike, an intern pursuing a Master’s degree in Library and Archival Science at Simmons College in Boston.
“Cabinets of curiosities were the precursor to museums,” Updike explained. “In the 1800s and early 1900s, young men would go off and travel the globe and collect natural history specimens and cultural specimens.”
As museums took hold, Updike said, curiosity exhibits were more often relegated to cabinet exhibitions featuring “things in the back room or things in the attic that you pull down and you don’t really know where they came from.”
At Lesley, Updike found more a few items that are not only odd, but have mysterious origins. Take the tall stand-up dolls that are absent an owner, donator or relevance. And then there’s the piece of plaster molding stashed away, for some reason, without any evidence of what building it came from or what year it was stored. Still, it fits the loose criteria of the exhibition.
“It’s just a piece of Lesley,” Updike said.