Petropoulos Art Scholars Program Off to Great Start

Thanks to the generosity of alumni/ae and parent donors to the newly established Petropoulos Art Scholars Program Fund, the Upper School Arts Department was able to launch a highly successful new program designed to encourage, support, and provide enrichment opportunities to Upper School students with a strong interest in the visual arts.

Students who signed up for the Art Scholars program in the fall were given the opportunity to participate in one or more of the various Petropoulos Art Scholars programs offered throughout the year. Those who participated in at least 75 percent of the programs received the designation of Petropoulos Art Scholar on their transcript, and most students completed 90 percent or more of the program. While the initial goal was for at least 10 students to complete the entire program, the Arts Department was delighted to recognize 15 students as Petropoulos Scholars in its first year.

Parrish Dobson, Head of the Arts Department, reports, "We are delighted with the student response to this initiative. Clearly visual arts students were ready and eager for the support, the stimulation, and the enrichment that we are now offering through this program."

Dobson and faculty colleagues John Norton, Paul Ruhlmann, and Laura Tangusso put together a varied program for students this year. While the offerings will vary each year, consistent components will include a major field trip each semester (this year's students visited the new Institute of Contemporary Art in Boston and the DeCordova Museum in Lincoln), and several in-house workshops or visiting artist events, with an emphasis on "hands-on" experiences for students in the medium being demonstrated. This year's workshops included a session with collage artist Ellen Weinberg and a photo etching workshop with BB&N parent Liz Marran P'12.

Additional program offerings included occasional "work in progress" sessions where students shared with each other a piece of their work and sought suggestions and feedback from other students, as well as several trips to local Open Studio events and gallery tours.

The Petropoulos Art Scholars Program Fund represents a new direction for the Petropoulos Art Prize Fund, originally established in 1983 by Andre Balazs '75 and Peter Gergely '72 in memory of John B. Petropoulos P'88, '93, a beloved member of the Browne & Nichols and BB&N Upper School Art Department faculty from 1962 to 1982. Additional contributions to this endowment fund are welcome to help sustain the program in future years. For more information contact Janet Rosen at janet_rosen@bbns.org or 617-800-2729.