Fine Arts Class to Travel to Germany

Students enrolled in a Fine Arts seminar will travel all-expenses-paid to West Germany during spring vacation with partial funding from the Fogg Art Museum, pending approval of the grant by the museum's director.

The students of Fine Arts 198 will study Goya prints and drawings at a major exhibition in the Stadel Museum in Frankfurt, Eleanor A. Sayre, instructor of the course and curator of prints, drawings, and photographs at the Museum of Fine Arts (MFA), said yesterday.

Most of the funding for the trip will probably come from a Fogg endowment fund restricted to "scholarships for the study of drawings in connection with the museum." Fogg officials said yesterday they will definitely allocate the money if they determine that Sayre's request meets the endowment fund's stipulations.

The trip "seems like an appropriate use of funds," Marcia Mintz, the Fogg's financial advisor, said yesterday. In addition to the museum's funding, Sayre, who stresses work with original material in her seminar, has received two private donations and a grant from another university.

Both the MFA and the Fogg have made substantial loans of Goya's prints to what one curator at the Fogg described yesterday as and "extraordinary exhibition." As a result, museum officials have offered to let the class view the exhibit after closing hours.

The students will spend their days visiting cultural exhibits in the area, including other works of 18th-century art and a performance of Handel. Sayre said some students will stay in a youth hostel, but the "less tough" ones--herself included--will stay in a hotel.

Undergraduates from two other colleges--Tufts and Wellesley--are among the four students in the seminar, which is taught at MFA.

Students will use the prints in Frankfurt for original research for a 30-page term paper. Sayre said she doubts next year's students will be able to research their papers in Frankfurt, adding. "It's not something we can do every year. It's a miracle!"