THIRTY-EIGHT years ago, in February 1923, a young woman
who, less than two years before, had been graduated Magna
Cum Laude from Radcliffe College arrived at Vassar to teach the
history of art. With her came a new age of vitality to deepen,
broaden, and enliven Vassar's already distinguished art de-
partment. It was a time of great excitement in the arts, of con-
troversy and discovery. The battle of the Armory Show was
still fresh in people's minds, and every exhibition of a young
painter seemed to throw a new challenge in the public's teeth.
Young scholars, the products of a new concern with connois-
seurship in academic America, were rediscovering the un-
fashionable (especially the Baroque) and reinterpreting the
misunderstood. To Vassar, Agnes Rindge brought this awak-
ened sense of the immediacy of the visual arts, their closeness
rather than their remoteness, their delights as well as their
awesomeness, their intimacies as well as their mysteries. She
communicated to her students and her colleagues the excite-
ment of being on the inside rather than the outside of an age
that was rediscovering its past and creating its future.

In 1928 she was awarded the degree of Doctor of Philosophy
from Radcliffe and the following year saw the publication of
her first book, "Sculpture." She was appointed Associate Pro-
fessor of Art in 1928, Professor in 1931, and in 1943 she suc-
ceeded Professor Oliver S. Tonks as Chairman of the Depart-
ment of Art, a position she still holds. She has made her
department and its collection of works of art a distinguished
ornament of the college and a source of intellectual excitement
and revelation to hundreds of undergraduates. She has im-
planted her searching and enthusiastic concern with the arts

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