Artscene July–December 2017 | Page 27

13 Since that first trip, Candie has visited many them through our doors.” museums. “I’m a huge fan of Andy Warhol—not These days, Candie is at home in museums, but that wasn’t always the case. “The first time I went to the museum was to the Art Institute of Chicago, on a class field trip. We went because there was a huge exhibition at the time that was focused on Van Gogh’s relationship to Gauguin,” she recalls. “For me, I didn’t know what to expect when I went there, but I learned two things. Prior to that visit, necessarily his art, but who he was as a person— so the Warhol Museum in Pittsburgh is one of my absolute favorites,” she says. “A museum that I Thank You Retiring Docents was not expecting to be good, but was absolutely blown away by, is the Detroit Institute of Arts in Detroit, Michigan, which was in jeopardy of being defunded recently. Those are two of my favorites that I could go to all the time.” I always thought Starry Night was the greatest As she starts to make her mark on the Chazen and painting ever, and it was so good because you see its visitors, Candie can refer to her own experience it on posters, and it’s pretty. And I saw it in falling in love with museums. “I never pictured person and was very disappointed, because for me myself in a museum. I did not go to museums the surface was just too flat when compared to growing up. I was always kind of the dark horse, some of the other surfaces where the impasto was like the weird little art girl drawing, writing, and two inches thick. So just in general the most it wasn’t until I was 17 that I went to a museum exciting part was seeing those things that my for the first time,” she says. “And I think this teacher had shown me on a slide, or I looked at in speaks to the importance and the power of a textbook and having it be right in front of me museums. Some of these children may only come and thinking wow this is really awesome. This is here once, but you never know what impact that here, I can look at it, and it is available to me.” visit can have on them.” After many years of generously giving their time and expertise to the Chazen, docents Darlene Olson, Marjon Ornstein, Ann Semmann, Margy Walker, and Karen Zilavy are retiring from service. Chazen staff and visitors are enormously grateful for their devotion to the museum. better serve their students, and also to help get