Wheaton News

Wheaton students assist Denver Art Museum in assembling exhibition of an alumna’s art

When Denver Art Museum visitors admire the just-opened exhibition of pioneering artworks created by noted artist (and Wheaton alumna) Nancy Hemenway Barton ’41, they also will be appreciating the archiving and collection management skills of current Wheaton students.

The museum’s exhibition, Confluence of Nature: Nancy Hemenway Barton, features pieces the artist and her family donated to the college, which are held in the Wheaton College Permanent Collection and the Marion B. Gebbie Archives and Special Collections. They will be on display in Denver through Oct. 8, 2025.

Students played a critical role in getting the collection objects and archival materials to the museum—cataloging art and photographs from Barton’s work and life, preparing materials for review by the curator of the exhibition, and carefully packing items for transport to Denver.

Barton, who passed away in 2008 at the age of 88, created an art form she dubbed “bayetage”—a combination of flower-dyed wool, bayeta (a coarse fabric napped to imitate felt) and collage. She traveled extensively and her art reflects the styles and traditions found in the locations in which she lived and worked. The large-scale wall reliefs Barton created over three decades highlight the cultures of vibrant communities from Bolivia to Benin.

“I used students to help throughout the process,” said Taylor McNeilly, the college archivist. “To help facilitate our loan of materials, the Barton family funded an archives-based student internship, which I supervised.” Marcello Madrazo ’27 served as McNeilly’s intern.

“I taught Marcello how to review and reprocess all of the requested material to the standards required,” McNeilly explained. “He cataloged what we have and we showed the materials to the exhibition’s curator during her two-day visit last summer. When we got the loan request in the fall, Marcello pulled most of the material, with assistance from other students.”

Madrazo worked 32 hours a week during the summer, and spent some of that time digitizing materials for consideration by the Denver Art Museum.

“Through working in the archives I learned how historical material, documents and objects are maintained, housed, and organized for researchers or historian’s ease of use,” said Madrazo, a physics and mathematics major who hopes to pursue patent law after graduation.

“I used databases and technology, and learned how to work with researchers and how to better facilitate their needs. I grew as an archives assistant and hope that the work I completed to help organize the archives will be used and referenced in the future,” he shared.

“Part of the job as an archivist is also interpreting what I could provide to answer any unanswered questions. I believe this will lend itself well to legal disputes over patents or gauging what grounds to cover in my arguments.”

At the same time, students interning with Leah Niederstadt, associate professor of museum studies/history of art and curator of the Permanent Collection, got involved as well. Over the summer, they pulled objects for Denver Art Museum Curator Jill D’Alessando to  review during a July research trip. Niederstadt said that D’Alessando graciously shared her review process of the objects and preparation for the exhibition with the interns.

Several months later, Niederstadt’s work-study students helped retrieve, inspect, photograph and wrap 11 Permanent Collection objects to transfer to a fine art handling company as part of the loan.

Wheaton’s collaboration with the Denver Art Museum also served as an object lesson for students. During the fall 2024 semester, Niederstadt discussed the loan with students enrolled in her Exhibition Design course, to illustrate the paperwork and processes involved in such loans.

“The Permanent Collection grows primarily through the generosity of donors like Barton and her family,” Niederstadt explained. “These gifts are used for object-based learning through class visits, collection-related assignments, independent research, and student-curated exhibitions in the Beard & Weil Galleries.

“Donations of cultural objects also provide opportunities to train work-study students in collections management, curation, museum registration and donor relations. These forms of experiential education are invaluable to our students as they build knowledge and skills to support their studies and post-Wheaton careers. Thanks to alumni, their families, and other friends of the College, the Permanent Collection and the College Archives have become extraordinary pedagogical resources.”

The unique loan project enabled Madrazo and other students to learn about Barton’s highly regarded art work, which has been highlighted previously in one-woman shows at more than 20 museums around the world, including a retrospective exhibition at the University of New England Gallery in Portland, Maine, titled “Ahead of Her Time.”

“When I began working on the collection I had never heard of tapestry and textile arts in a museum sense, said Madrazo. “… I enjoyed many of her ocean-related pieces and learned more about them from her archived interviews. Overall, I gained an appreciation for textile art, especially her work.”