Muse de Belles Arts

For Myra A. Mayman, who has not spent more than one of the last ten years in any given place, accepting the Corporation's three-year appointment as the first Harvard-Radcliffe coordinator of the extracurricular arts represents an unprecedented time commitment. The job will undoubtedly require diplomatic as well as artistic skills, administrative as well as creative talents. But the post promises to be well-tailored to this young woman whose interests are as colorful and as varied as the fashionable hats which are a distinctive part of her costume.

Mayman's position resulted from a recommendation made last Spring by the Ackerman Committee in a report which also proposed that a standing Faculty committee offer credit courses in the arts. This latter proposal, which could undermine the autonomy of such facilities as the Loeb Drama Center, is currently under debate in the Faculty Council, and Mayman has already been drawn into the crossfire.

The pressure on her to state her opinions about Harvard's policy on the arts--despite the fact that she came to the University for the first time just a month ago--has more than fulfilled Mayman's expectations of challenging employment. Even thought it may already be more than she bargained for, Mayman said this is precisely the reason she decided to accept Harvard's offer over other job possibilities. "I need to do something that has substance," she said in an interview last week. "I chose this job because I knew it would be the hardest."

This compulsion to take on demanding work seems to be a strong force in Mayman's personality and in part accounts for her annual stints in new areas ever since she studied in Germany during her junior year in college.

Mayman, who last year served as Bryn Mawr's acting director of admissions, said that the only job she has had that compares with her current post was the work she did with the Boston Symphony Orchestra in preparing for its 90th anniversary celebration.

"It was a one-night project but it took a year to plan. It was very nerve-wracking at times. But it was like this in that it all had to be started from a small basement office." (Mayman's temporary headquarters here is the old Radcliffe College Marshall's office in Agassiz.) Mayman left the BSO after a year however because as she put it, "I didn't feel that I could progress any longer in that job or become more competent or gain a broader range of experience."

Mayman calls herself "a great extracurricular person" who has never made a commitment to any particular interest. Many of her interests are musical--she studied piano for 12 years, has taken guitar lessons since 9th grade, and plays the lute. When she studied in Germany she and a banjo player put together a series of concerts and lectures on American folk music. While working at Tanglewood for the BSO she frequented the shop of a violin maker because she enjoyed its atmosphere of glue pots and violin parts. However Mayman does not own one of the musical appliances which most people take for granted--a record player--largely because she associates it with being settled.

In addition to music, Mayman has dipped into drawing and glass blowing, and has done a lot of travelling, hiking and canoeing. She spent a year in England and another in Puerto Rico followed by a four-month camping trip across the United States. Mayman says that she is happiest when she is outdoors, but that she does not like team sports.

"One of the things we always had beaten into us as children was the importance of being different, of not being like everyone else," Mayman said. "Both my parents, especially my mother, encouraged us to be independent."

Education was always stressed in her family, Mayman said. Neither of her parents went to college, and both emphasized the value of books and of experiences. Mayman describes her father, who died when she was 10 years old, as a "book-oriented, dashing Brazilian who wore white linen suits and silk shirts and who played polo." Her mother is "bohemian in a funny way," and has taught fencing and ballet. "My parents met while they were horseback riding, and were engaged in a week," Mayman said.

Despite such romantic parentage, Mayman's attitude towards her work and her future is a pragmatic one: "Bryn Mawr was a revelation. I was impressed by the commitment that the people there make to something which they have judged legitimate. They're not going through the agonies of what they're all about. Their integrity has to do with being realistic, with recognizing their limitations."

Mayman remembers high school in Stoneham with something less than nostalgia. "There were certain things that one had to do. It was the era when people felt that you had to be a 'well-rounded' person in order to get into college. So I did everything--I was a cheerleader, a member of the trampoline team, the glee club and the yearbook staff--everything except field hockey, but these things didn't mean very much to me," she said.

At Bryn Mawr, in contrast, she said, "Nobody expected you to do or be anything as long as you didn't impose on anyone. You were told that you were on your own, but also that you were important, that you counted, that you had the right to make certain demands on a faculty member's time. I think that very few people say that to students now."

Mayman said that it was after she had graduated from Bryn Mawr in 1966 that she became aware of the impact of attending a single-sex institution. "I hadn't thought of myself as being a girl first," she said. "It was assumed that you would go on to graduate school, that you would have a career, that you wouldn't just sell tickets at lots of ladies' luncheons.

"I had always rebelled against the idea of growing up and giving dinners for Brazilian surgeons even though you can always rationalize that sort of thing by saying that you are helping to solve world problems over a nice meal," she continued. "I don't like marking time in any sense, and most of the women I know from the seven sisters are like that--they are a driven, eager group, but not in the way that has to do with aggression. I remember a male friend of mine once asking me if I didn't have success drives. I thought his question was so sad because I really don't feel that. I can't face myself if I don't do my best and I have a terrific fear of skimming things, of indulging in a lot of big talk. But I don't think you have to make a big splash."

Mayman went on to Columbia where she received her M.A. in comparative literature in 1969. She was a housemother at Barnard during the 1968 student riots and says both that it was an unhappy time and that graduate school killed whatever impulse she had to teach. Although she was offered a job at the Houghton Library, she signed on with the Boston Symphony Orchestra. "I had never done anything that wasn't academic, anything that smacked of frivolity," she said. "I didn't feel that raising money for the BSO was a weighty project. But it was exciting to do something nobody had done before. It made me feel good when I could fling myself into something and see the results."

But it will be a while before Myra Mayman can safely "fling" herself into her present job even though people expect action from her immediately. She says that she does not want to be badgered into purely administrative work, but as yet she has seen few of the undergraduates who are supposed to be her primary concern. She cannot avoid the controversial debate that has surrounded the role of the arts at Harvard for decades. And in order to sort out all of its intricacies, Mayman will undoubtedly have to draw on her varied experience as well as on her enthusiasm.